I'm starting to wonder if social networking sites (@facebook, @Twitter) and search sites (@Google) of today are similar to web browser engines around 2003 (?) or so, around when use-after-free had just been demonstrated to be a reliable security exploit.
Clara Jeffery @ClaraJeffery
19 Mar 2018
If you work at a social media platform and you're not spending most of your day agitating for internal reform—on so many fronts—what are you doing?

Mar 19, 2018 · 8:56 PM UTC

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Around this time, I think Microsoft stopped feature development for an extended period of time and focus on software security across Windows and Internet Explorer. This made a big difference to security. (It may have had interesting effects on the progress of Web technology.)
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Are @facebook and @Twitter and @Google now looking at gaming of their algorithms as a security vulnerability the way we in the browser world now look at things that could give sites the ability to execute arbitrary code on a user's computer?
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And to be clear: norms in the browser engine world are moving towards multiple layers of protection: writing code in safer languages, aggressively fixing even potential vulnerabilities, tools for software auditing, sandboxing that prevents many APIs from being called, etc.
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I'm not entirely sure what the equivalents would be in search and recommendation algorithms. I'm not an expert in those fields. But I think if the best minds in those fields see it as a problem to be solved, there will be serious movement towards solutions.
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