I was thinking more of the algorithms that recommend unsolicited content, like on facebook, youtube, and twitter. Were you thinking more of search engine page r

I was thinking more of the algorithms that recommend unsolicited content, like on facebook, youtube, and twitter. Were you thinking more of search engine page rank? I think that the user content recommendation algorithms might be (or could be!) easier to describe than search page-rank algorithms, not needing to worry about some of the things you mentioned like scraping (because content is posted by users). Other things you mentioned are still relevant, like blacklists and ignoring content, now that these are platforms are so influential, often being referred to as the new public square. Why can't facebook let you see posts from your friends in chronological order, or geographically close, or some other set of understandable options? Why is facebook protected when they inject unsolicited posts about something outrageous happening, just to keep you online, even if it's something harmful? How does facebook choose which posts to put in front of you, contnent that you did not ask for? Why does youtube recommend flat earth videos so often? How many big override knobs does twitter have to decide what goes viral, and what does not? The same for tiktok. Who at facebook and youtube and twitter and tiktok gets to decide this stuff for the billions of us using their platforms? I haven't thought as much about Section 230 as it applies more specifically to something like google search and page-rank. That is a related topic. But at least you have to ask for something on a search engine, it doesn't bait you with unrelated content like the recommendation engines on the platforms I mentioned. I do agree with you that this can get complicated. These recommendation algorithms are very influential - this is the new media, much bigger than anything before. If they can't describe how or why they promoted a harmful piece of content in a trial, then perhaps they should not be promoting content? Otherwise we are being manipulated on an unprecedented scale by a few insiders with very little oversight.