If you think in terms of Google PageRank, replies and likes, not follows, are the equivalent of links.

Follows = stated preference
Replies and Likes = revealed preference

It’s all about social capital @dwr.eth 

It’s not about how many follows,
It’s also not about amount of engagement 

Both can be gamed 

rather it’s about strength of follows & their engagement 

That’s page rank

It’s not who links
It’s the authority of who links 

U can’t game vitalik’s engagement

I’m working on smth here and wil come back with math and proofs asap

amps was/is a cool idea! 
Follows still belong on protocol but other/additional methods / math can determine authority

yeah but some people think follows are the way to rank for some reason. one of the reasons we considered not having on protocol and instead “amps” which is more temporal social capital

Correct.

Everything has a weight.
The weight strength of one node is amplified by the weights of the nodes connected to it.

Vitalik replies > Vitalik likes > N bot replies

That's pretty much the lessons learned from Pagerank

The reason today's SEO is so different from 20 years ago was essentially recognizing that a link from the WSJ, Wikipedia or some forum are entirely different

what if there’s something else missing from the equation? 

Page rank algo is backwards. These aren’t pages, they’re people. 

The issue is 1 person = 1 person and there’s not enough data instrumented purely in engagement, follows, attestation. You need more data.