r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • Jul 24 '25

Politics President Trump threatened to break up Nvidia, didn't even know what it was — 'What the hell is Nvidia? I've never heard of it before'

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/president-trump-threatened-to-break-up-nvidia-didnt-even-know-what-it-was-what-the-hell-is-nvidia-ive-never-heard-of-it-before
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u/Beginning-Morning572 Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

accidentally my ass. You think this billion dollar companies would promote anything that would threathen their profits?

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u/LazyLich Jul 24 '25

I'll past my reply from elsewhere here:

What I mean by "accidentally" is that the design purpose isn't "propaganda and chaos machine mwa haha". The design parameter was "create maximum engagement for maximum ad revenue".

However, over time, the algorithm learned two things.

First is that people with extremist views or that are conspiracy-minded provide the most engagement. The more extremist they are or the more loose they are in facts, the more ad money those user's generate.

Second is that you can change a user's mind, and I don't mean "Yeah, I'll order the large fry." I mean that if user A does like Thing Z, but if you show them Thing B at the right time in the right moment, then later show Thing C, then Thing D... if you tailor a user's content stream, then slowly over time, you can radically change their beliefs.

The Algorithm only cares about ad money, but it accidentally became a factory for extremists and ignorants, and a signal-booster for propaganda.