[goatinaboat]

Indeed. Two friends conversing on Facebook are misled into believing that they’re talking to each other, whereas in reality they are both having solo conversations with Facebook itself.

But I don’t think Facebook -the algo - really cares about which way it influences it’s captive audience. It just wants more ads to be shown. It’s up to the humans in charge to decide on what those ads are, and they are very bad at it. Or they don’t care either.