Ha. I think part of this struggle, to borrow your analogy, is that YouTube and Facebook are organizationally blind to the fact that they built a gun.

Or maybe Google is concerned. And Facebook just doesn't care.

But the root cause is "algorithms for increasing engagement will prefer shock content." Solve that, and they wouldn't need to band-aid issues like this.

Dude, the "root cause" is that profit is part of the equation. There is no "right algorithm" for controlling the public conversation. All fascism is bad fascism.

Is that overboard?

How'd you get from profit to censorship to fascism? That's a lot of jumps!

There are simpler explanations.

Fascism is governmental power (ie dictatorial control over the public conversation.) in the hands of the corporation. Which is exactly what we have here.