Right, you could make the image just a really small line of text with your name or something.  On YouTube, you know how they beg for likes and comments, they were doing that because most people don't do those things naturally and the algo rewarded it..  Views are most of their real metric, yet that was gamed too easily so the tech adapted to encourage more than just viewing..  Not sure any of that matters here, without any advertising impressions.

I do think a lot about the reasons social media even exists or why anyone would use it, or what they would use it for now that we are resetting from big media advert driven incentives.

It's interesting to think about.  What drives creative people to 'publish' their things.  What matters to them?  What matters to their readers?

The answers I believe are potentially numerous and different for everyone.