I don't think it's necessarily a case of optimizing for profit, although that's certainly a valid way of framing it. Rather, I think it's likely the engineers

I don't think it's necessarily a case of optimizing for profit, although that's certainly a valid way of framing it. Rather, I think it's likely the engineers responsible tried to create systems they earnestly thought would be good at suggesting interesting content. A system that promotes interesting and sensational car videos to car enthusiasts seems ethically sound and quite cool; I think that's probably the sort of scenario the architects of these systems were considering. They neglected to consider the deleterious effects such a system could have on society when applied to some higher-stakes topics, like politics. Maybe they did this because they were optimizing for profit and blinded by dollar signs, but I think this might also have happened if the individuals involved were simply naively unaccustomed to considering the possibility that software could harm society.