These 'dumb' algorithms probably have a much higher impact than one might guess. It's just a much more subtle but extremely far reaching effect. Complete surfing habits change. Industries rise and fall due to it. It is operating on a longer time-frame and without spectacular events. It smears out it's effect. If it is intentional this is called salami tactics, long lie and other things. We are not well prepared to deal with or even detect this rationally because we feel the effect only via its aggregate over lots of events. Things our subconscious long term feeling notices but can only propagate to the concsious via vague feelings of dissatisfaction, frustration and other. But there is no specific 'enemy' that can be hit. The effect looks more like an inevitable force of nature than a conscious act of an agent. Even if it should be so. Fear the dumb but massively parallel AI.

Perhaps. But whatever news I've heard about social network AI didn't pass the threshold for my caring about it. A hypothetical story with the above title would have. As far as I'm concerned Facebook/Google AI discussion lies outside of the scope of my comment.