It’s perfectly reasonable to want to prevent the harms of The Algorithm. Whether we can do so in a practical and effective way is the really tough question. We can all provide a putative definition of The Algorithm by pointing to bad stuff on popular online platforms. But writing laws is quite a lot tougher. (Who knew?) And finding a technical basis for differentiating between the TikTok recommendation algorithm and “get the last ten posts in reverse chronological order” turns out to be very difficult, as the Threshold Conditions Regulations demonstrate.

https://tommorris.org/posts/2025/what-does-the-government-think-an-algorithm-is/

Via Graham