Algorithms are designed, evaluated and impoved by organizations, so are not a point of blame at all. They’re not accidentally putting divisive stuff to the top, the analytics, devs and management all surely see the consequences and decide that the algos are aligned with the business .
Many Organizations generally are within some sort of
competitive landscape - companies in the market,
non profits with donations, city and state govts for tax base. So they all will optimize for effectiveness towards some metric to some degree, restricted by whatever fear of backlash or consequences they may have.
No one is going to approve a ‘say anything as long as it bumps ratings immediately’ algorithm, but almost everyone is going to try to do at least what the top competitor seems to be doing.
Which is algorithmic/ML based engagement optimization, with some kind of ‘but not the most controversial if it’s literally nazis’ type filter for things with too much political blowback (aka calls for insurrection), or legal issues (child porn).
If you look, it’s literally almost everywhere now. And earlier they didn’t even have the ‘not literally nazi’s’ filter.
