chained to the algorithm…

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/is-the-algorithm-the-single-greatest-f94?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Excerpts from article :THOM HARTMANN OCT 30, 2025

It can twist and wreck people’s minds and lives — tear apart families and destroy countries — in a way that can be more rapid and more powerful than heroin, cocaine, or fentanyl. And yet it is completely unregulated.

An algorithm is a software program/system that inserts itself between humans as we attempt to communicate with each other. It decides which communications are important and which are not, which communications will be shared and which will not, what we will see or learn and what we will not.

The algorithms driving social media sites ultimately decide which direction society will move as a result of the shared information they encourage or suppress across society.

The algorithms’ main purpose is to make more money for the billionaires who own the social media platforms.

The morbidly rich people who own our social media, focus more on adding more billions to their money bins than the consequences of their algorithms, don’t seem particularly concerned about these issues. Instead, they appear to be intentionally tweaking their algorithms to promote content that agrees with their political views and economic interests (although we can’t be sure because they keep them secret).