What I'm saying is that this is a heuristic, not an algorithm, and that you should blame Facebook, not "the algorithm"
All this talk is very funny to me because it shows that most people here are too young. The algorithm exists because the establishment demanded it. I say establishment because I remember what the old geek culture was and the demand didn't come from it. It came from outside of technical libertarian circle. Once social media companies said it is possible the demand became even more shrill and it culminated in 2016 when Trump won. The algorithm was created specifically to do what Zuckerberg made it do in 2020.
I just don't think that's a useful definition. You should just say "Facebook is censoring the content".
https://www.reddit.com/r/modhelp/comments/1px939/hiding_post...
Anyone who ever had any direct contact with implementing heuristics would call bullshit on this take.
Some heuristics don't even return the same result twice. Now the guy that presses the button is supposed to be held responsible for what comes out of that crapshoot?
If you implement heuristics, it's your damn job to test your implementation and monitor it for adverse effects.
In the context of this article, somebody made the decision to specifically change the thing (no matter if you want to call it a heuristic or an algorithm or whatever) to bury a certain story. This is not even an unintended outcome, it's an entirely intended outcome.
You are only complaining that an heuristic outputted a result you don't like.
That's not a bug nor a problem. It's just that you feel you're entitled to an outcome that suits your fancy, regardless of the process involved.
Heuristics don't even ensure they'll output the same result twice, either because their input changes with time or because they already integrate a stochastic component.
Demanding that an operator polices the output of said heuristics especifically to suit your personal taste makes no sense at all, let alone demanding people be "held responsible" for disappointing you.