This article is only half-right. Some of the other things you don't see because the algorithm doesn't promote them are: - scientists and educators that make 1

This article is only half-right. Some of the other things you don't see because the algorithm doesn't promote them are: - scientists and educators that make 1 hour long videos to explain how something is incorrect. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H95VCYLBh-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H95VCYLBh-A (less than 0.1% reach of the original) - long threads of detailed analysis with cross-references - long educational material that explaines e.g. confounders in order to explain why some statistical results observed are not possible to interpret in a certain way The reason you don't see this kind of content is simple: the level of its engagement is low. Its not clickbaity, its not exciting, it doesn't have a rebel perspective, it doesn't claim to uncover something nobody has ever seen before. Its often kind of a downer too, pointing out other people's mistakes. Social media sites make their money through engagement. The longer you stay on their site, the more ads they can show you. As such, their default algorithms promote engagement at any cost. It turns out that this trains creators to spread clickbaity, potentially misleading, false but exciting and novel "information" (see paper [1] as well as Veritasium's youtube specific explanation [2]) You know what other thing spreads a lot? Outrage. Extreme reactions to spread of misinformation are also engaging. People will fight over them due to strong feelings: one side frustrated by seeing the effort put into debunking having absolutely no effect (because it doens't get promoted by the algorithms, nobody finds out about it) while the other side feeling like the core values we have (free speech) are under attack. Unfortunately, there is no way for social media companies to fix this problem without taking huge hits in revenue. The only way we can fix it is by becoming aware that what we're seeing isn't free speech, its some distorted picture of the world designed to engage us longer at any cost. [1]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap9559 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap9559 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8