A. Jeesh, there's no problem with informal anthropomorophizing in this situations. When humans have a goal and feedback towards reaching a goal. When a human gets positive feedback that X gets them towards the goal, human choose X. The combined system Google-corp+developer+algorithm is also goal seeking and making choices so anthropomorphizing the system is appropriate.
B. The problem we're talking about isn't "noise" but "feedback" - a goal-seeking-system that muddies it's final result with it's initial state. Essentially, bias, a situation that's quite common in statical systems.
And youtube rules also motivate providers to churn out a lot of content regularly (leading to quick to produce crap) and punish those who take their time to think or research before they talk.
The problem is probably 1% or less of users ever click it.
They would be much less horrible if every time one watched videos, they would rate them in a way, instead of assuming that "watching"="interest".
> And youtube rules also motivate providers to churn out a lot of content regularly (leading to quick to produce crap) and punish those who take their time to think or research before they talk.
That's not just Youtube: about all media is driven by what's "new" and "hyped" rather than what is deep and well thought about.
I am interested in scientist or writer etc youtube channel about her topic. Not so much in confident-Johnny-cranked-out crap on the same topic.
Recommendation algorithms don't "conclude" anything though, they are merely statistical tools to ensure you get somewhat relevant content, but they are never perfect because there is a lot of noise in what everyone watches.