>> best predictor of quality is "who likes your stuff"

this is very true

_who_ liked your cast is the top heuristic we use to clean up our Trending Feed API and it works most of the time 🪐

docs.neynar.com/reference/feed-trending

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

Would you rather from a good account have: 

100 total quality replies and likes but no follow or a follow but no engagement

"quality" might be doing a lot of heavy lifting there

i haven't thought about this nearly as much as i'm sure you have but my gut concern is that follows are actually a pretty high signal for trust (+ some social norm noise) whereas likes/replies tend to clump up around scissor statements etc

maybe worth asking but i assume the pagerank algo actually takes them all into account? and i hope it includes bookmarks too :)