Of course it's easy: such decisions were taken _before_ the feeds where algorithmically built.

You rely on unambigous, "physical" properties of the videos.

There is a physical property of all the videos: the time of publication.

There is a physical property of all the channels: did you subscribe to it, or not ?

So, you show, in (reverse) chronological order of publication, the list of videos published by the channels you subscribed to.

Now, of course, a brand new user would have no subscription - you show them a search box.

But then, now, your search algorithm has to weight the various channels that match - but your algo can be relatively transparent, relatively auditable, and the same for all users (unless given explicit preferences, and of course national laws, etc, etc...)

I'm sorry, but, I have a "subscriptions" page in youtube or substack, and they're chronological, and they show me what I want to watch. You keep that.

There is a "home" page in both service that is algoritmically built, and they show me crap that the algo want me to watch. You get rid of that.

Do this, and I can consider you a "neutral" actor, and accept that you shift the blame to content producer.

Or, keep the algo feed, but don't take money from advertiser when I watch yet another flat earther video because YOU decided it was trending.

If you want to decide what I watch, and make money from that decision - congrats, you are an editor. You get the earnings, and the responsibility.

Please don't tell me, with a straight face, that the people who build the algo don't "decide" what I watch. If they want to tweak the algo to downgrade the flamewars and outrage and conspiracy theories and violence and abuse, they can. They do not want to, for business reasons. [1]

That's fair, up to a point - we need publications with editors that agree on having "edgy" content. I'm not advocating for blanket censorship.

I did not like social network preventing me from _sharing_ articles about Biden's son laptop (this was actually beyond the law, but somehow they managed to find the resources and programmers to implement _that_, because, at the time, the execs where cozying with a different administration.)

I'm advocating for "accepting your responsibility as an editor".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Haugen#October_5,_2021...