@Lex Tenebris I think you also need to acknowledge that there are real social problems that do need to be addressed. Lets look at beliefs, from one extreme to another extreme. On the nutty side of things, we've got flat earth, chemtrails, 9/11 conspiracy, moon-landing denialism ... these are just nutty. They would be obscure-nutty, fringe, crank theories, if it were not for youtube, which has caused them to become wildly popular. So, you have to ask, from the sociology viewpoint: what is it about youtube, the youtube technology, the youtube policy, that has caused an explosive growth in popularity? (Flat earth has gone from effectively zero gatherings to 50 organized conferences annually, each one with hundreds of people attending, and paying not just door fees, but driving hundreds of miles, renting hotel rooms to stay for the weekend, to attend multiple days of lectures on flat earth. This is what I mean by "explosive"). Before youtube, before social media, this was impossible. So something about the technology caused a shift.

And its not just "technology": its specifically: the user interface. The buttons you press. The like buttons, the hate buttons. On slashdot, you can rate "five stars informative" "five stars funny", "five stars you're a crank", "five stars you're a troll". So ssb doesn't have this, but maybe it should? What about hate buttons? what about subscriptions to block lists? What about spam removal? Maybe child-porn removal? Getting my laptop searched at an airport, and finding out some ahole posted child-porn on ssb and it got mirrored on my laptop, and Homeland Security found it, that would be bad. These are design and implementation decisions that software designers can make, they can actually control this stuff, and they should ponder them a bit. Having "five stars you're an asshole" in a pull-down menu is a conscious design choice. It's not an accident. It doesn't show up in the GUI because of market forces or popular demand. Some coder has to put it there.

These decisions alter social reality. They alter how people interact, they alter what they do, what they say, and what they think in a very literal sense: the youtube GUI literally amplifies beliefs in flat earth. It is literally a thought-amplifier. A thought-spreader, a thought promoter. And maybe some of the thoughts it is amplifying and spreading should not be amplified and spread. And I think you damn well know exactly which kinds of thoughts one might not want to amplify and spread.

There's a thin line between reality, between truth, and indoctrination and propaganda. Asking where that line is is not a waste of time. Designing technology so you don't fall over that line is a good idea. Think of it like a cover over some gears in machinery -- so you don't stick your fingers in there and get them mangled. Like that, but for your brain. Because, uhhh, yeah, certain kinds of thoughts really are a mental disease. Literally.

So, when you say "people are not the problem", you might want to study some history -- Jim Jones and Jonestown is a good place to start. Jim was a real nice guy who was making the world a better place for everyone. Seriously, that's the truth. But then things went sideways, and then it all ended badly. Like, very badly. Shit happens. And he was the nice guy. Maybe not so nice is the Islamic State. And just to be clear, domestic terrorism is right up there next to ISIS. You don't get a free pass/virgins-in-heaven because you're an American redneck.