Social Networks and the News Feed Algorithm

Long term societal consequences are still being debated, but i think now we have seen several very large scale experiments that are beginning to show that this is polarizing. The business models of these platforms a run on an attention economy, where they essentially are selling a people's attention to advertisers as opportunities to persuade those people to vote for a certain political candidate or buy a certain and so on. But the goals of these algorithms have been to maximi engagement, rather than to think broadly about what’s best for society. And you know, it is an important element of making the information in these networks useful. I don't think they were thinking about the sucidal implications. They were thinking about