[JumpCrisscross]

> it's not true that it's designed to propagate misinformation

That was hyperbole on OP’s part.

The algorithm is designed to incentivise the creation and dissemination of attention-grabbing content without considering truthfulness. That simply and directly incentivises misinformation propagation. The fact that politically-disinterested troll groups routinely get incentivised to produce misinformation for clicks is Exhibit A to how deeply Facebook promotes these mechanisms.

Facebook and its employees turn a blind eye to these second-order effects because they are massively profitable. That’s as close to “designed to” as one can get without literally coding for it.