i imagine its more a function of “people who have similar activity to you frequently responded to these comments,” and in practice with any sort of political content that’s going to be opinions you disagree with.
i realize its a bit of a chicken and egg situation but i dont think they postulated “oh controversial opinions will get more engagement, lets tweak the algorithm to show that to people.” its that the algorithm led itself to doing that and they’re very happy to let it.
i dont intend to discount the lack of ethics here whatsoever but i just find this kind of simple profit-seeking logic resulting in complex shitty outcomes both fascinating and ubiquitous when analyzing capital’s behavior. so often we attribute an individual’s intent and planning to things that are really emergent complexities of capital’s simple process of profit selection.
anyways im sure everybody already knows this i just find it morbidly neat.
i think the chinese sealed their victory like twenty years ago, as long as we avoid any nuclear incidents. i’m pretty optimistic about the long-term future outside of concerns about who is going to end up in control of america’s nukes when it collapses.
if the US ends up balkanizing, which seems like the probable end result to me, it’s almost inevitable that without some kind of huge foreign intervention nuclear weapons are going to end up in the hands of someone who will use them.
while obviously the world has a bumpy road ahead that’s the one roadblock i see with no plausible way (that i can think of) around it.