Is about the knowing the value you're providing

I can only vote for candidates standing in my region, both in UK and Germany.. I'll grant the UK could be more democratic too, but the EU is as democratic as at least some of it's member states.

Yes but your original comment said mostly unelected, which isn't true.

I guess it's easier to require it not be able to distinguish at all than define what bias actually is and what the errors on that are.

But as I understood it's already established that many of the big initial training sets were highly biased, so it's a legitimate concern.

All that don't just have time ordered feeds, or feeds which are highly configurable by the user anyway. I guess mastodon doesn't fall under this category..

And not having any control is why some "shithole" countries have that reputation..

While billboards are annoying, a) everyone sees the same, they aren't tailored, b) they aren't as ubiquitous, most people don't spend as much time looking at billboards as they do at various feeds and c) they are only show 1 advert, I would say an equivalent to a feed would be every billboard in a part of a city showing an advert that sells the same thing in a slightly different way.

To the point where I'll click away if they don't give me a way to opt out, or if I feel like they're taking the mickey too much. All those cookery websites that are so snooty about cookies as if there weren't 10 more similar websites where they came from...

Also I find it hard to believe that Putin wouldn't come up with another excuse after that one ran out.. Did you see the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics ?