Everyone is a victim of The Algorithm in one way or another. I'm still on Instagram (yes, I know) and I quite often fall into the trap of looking at Reels (super short videos) for too long.
I don't even like most of the content it shows me, but I keep swiping just in case the next one is something funny. The algorithm is really good at recognizing when I'm looking at a video of a golden retriever for 3 seconds longer than usual. I will get a bunch of other golden retriever videos and suddenly it will cut to something else entirely, lest I get bored and quit the app.
Then again, showing a user videos of golden retrievers is a benign use of an algorithm. The algorithm is also used to get you hooked onto extreme, dangerous content. Our brains love nothing more than engaging with content that gets us angry, scared, sad, or anxious. All to make us pay attention for longer, because eyeballs sell ads and ads are the lifeblood of these companies. They are using our psychology against us to make a buck, and it's working incredibly well. Thousands of people are working every day to exploit our brains in better, more efficient ways.
It's this algortihm that is (partly) to blame for the state of the world today where people are more divided than ever. Big tech became politicized; it's no longer about the truth, it's about what gets the most clicks, the most eyeballs, the most ad revenue. People are acting dumb willingly, all to get that precious attention.
But is the algorithm to blame for all of these problems?
I wrote about my favorite laptop and someone put it up on Hacker News and Lobsters. Both HN and Lobsters don't have much in the way of an algorithm - they rank stories based on newness, amount of comments in a certain timeframe, and upvotes. Again, people love nothing more than interacting with negative content and, even without an algorithm, the negativity still spread like wildfire and reached the top so more people felt the need to chime in. The result was a whopping 140+ comments on the Lobsters thread which are insane numbers on there.
It's easy to blame to algorithm for the flood of negative, harmful shit that's spread out over the internet nowadays. It puts the blame on a thing we have no control over, instead of on ourselves. But maybe, instead of leaving a comment on something you have no affinity with, you should ask yourself "is what I have to say going to add anything of value?" and if the answer is no, maybe just don't comment? If you don't care at all about Mac hardware, you can quite safely ignore all content that's about Mac hardware. It will save you and everyone else a bunch of time and frustration.