User Engagement and Shareholder Value as the highest maxims of algorithm design by Meta and others: Mariana Mazzucato and Ilan Strauss have a very clear opinion on this. “The lawsuit against Meta is ultimately about the company’s algorithmic practices, which are designed to maximize ‘User Engagement’, i.e. to keep users on the platform longer and to encourage more comments, likes and reposts. A good way to ensure this often involves showing harmful content on the edge of illegality, turning time on the platform into a compulsive activity – with features like ‘endless scrolling’ and non-stop notifications and messages. As advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) make the algorithm’s recommendations even more targeted and thus more addictive, there is an urgent need to develop new governance structures that are oriented towards the ‘common good’ and not a narrowly defined notion of ‘Shareholder Value’. Fortunately, it is within the power of policy makers to shape these markets for the better and to establish appropriate supervision over algorithms.” – Mariana Mazzucato, Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and Chair of the Council on the Economics of Health for All of the World Health Organization (WHO), and Ilan Strauss, Research Associate at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, in “Why algorithms need to be supervised – To protect the health of Big Tech users, algorithms must not be solely committed to the interests of shareholders”, guest commentary in Handelsblatt, 22., 23., 24. March 2024, page 18, No. 159.
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