>Second, we will prevent “liked by” and “followed by” recommendations from people you don’t follow from showing up in your timeline and won’t send notifications for these Tweets. These recommendations can be a helpful way for people to see relevant conversations from outside of their network, but we are removing them because we don’t believe the “Like” button provides sufficient, thoughtful consideration prior to amp…
Squaring it is pretty easy, I think. Recommendation engines are neither inherently good or harmful -- think of them as an amplifier. In normal times, they work pretty well -- it gives you more of the stuff you like, which usually isn't harmful. Just entertaining/fluff/interesting/whatever. But closer to an election, they can be gamed and weaponized for harm -- Russia can activate botnets, fake accounts, etc. and lies…
But there's elections all the time. There's many different elections in the US alone, any many many more throughout the world.
And elections are just one thing, what about influence over opinions for bills/law/reforms? Wars? Public opinion about basically any subject, from economics to gender/race/class tensions?
If you accept that social media is weaponised for this election, it seems naive to not accept it is being weaponised absolutely all the time