It’s the same algorithm. It has the same purpose and the same result. It has simply been updated and improved. And it most likely still relies on certain markers that can measure how much a post will be engaged with and who will do it, except those markers are now less primitive and harder for us to define.
We’re arguing semantics. This has always been the purpose of a social network: to keep you addicted to it. To keep you interacting with it. They don’t make money if you’re not there to click their ads, to look at their sponsored videos, to be marketed towards. Did they do it as well 10 years ago as they do it today? No, of course not. But you were still being targeted with posts that would “do well” with your gender, your age group, your location etc. They haven’t changed one little bit of their business model.
So what are we talking about here? Some guy discovered 10 years down the road that a company wants you to keep using their website/service/app/whatever, but he thinks 10 years ago that company was - what? More scrupulous? More genuine?
Nah, man. It was always the same. They just got better at their jobs. And - fuck me, it sounds like they were pretty good at their jobs even 10 years ago: they managed to keep Joe Slow scrolling for an entire decade.