It doesn't even have to be intentional. Imagine endless ABX testing to increase ad views and session time, cycling through countless feed algorithms. The winners could very well end up being the ones that are most frustrating for the user, but with product and engineering just thinking they are running some tests and reaching goals.
I strongly believe stuff like this doesn't happen by accident. It's easy to write pieces about how a soulless algorithm is determining stuff and we can all be sad about it, but in my experience, that's rarely true.
There's almost always at least a software developer (or technical person of some sort) calling out "Hey, are you sure we should rank by $X? It will have this edge case in situations $Y and $X?". Usually they get steamrolled by a "product" person who's invented some new terminology for whatever shady shit they are pushing now. "It's just growth hacking" "complimentary contextually relevant ads will improve the user experience".
People know. They always know. They just choose to feign ignorance when they get busted.
Even if we grant them the benefit of doubt, it certainly isn't an accident to keep using the same algorithm once you know its consequences.
There's been hand-wringing about Youtube funnelling users to extremist content, and it always comes to down to "the algorithm" as if there's nothing that can be done about it.
Someone had to choose to implement the algorithm. Someone had to choose the metrics it was optimized to meet. Someone had to go, "Children are being drawn to extremist videos after watching PewDiePie and that's okay."
I view facebook's newsfeed and youtube's list of suggestions like entering into a popular reddit thread about something dividing the community that has lots of posts.
You enter into the comment section and it's automatically sorted by Controversial. At least that's how I see it.
People don't necessarily know. I can, or there was a time when I could, code a Mandelbrot set generator from memory. Yet that doesn't mean I can draw it myself in its infinite detail. Algorithms have unintended results, in general or in detail.
