Given how many Americans mistrust "academia," "liberal education" and "mainstream science," I'm gonna go with yes, given some disturbingly large value of yes.
It would be nice if Youtube and other algorithmically driven platforms preferred to surface educational and factual content but as soon as they tried, of course, Americans would scream bloody murder about the Ministry of Truth trying to indoctrinate them with wokeist propaganda, censor alternative facts and placate the masses with MKULTRA mind control. And we'd have to have another futile conversation about who watches the watchers and what even "facts" are.
[1]:https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3617062/children-turn-backs-on...
(I get the irony of pushing a gossip blog to prove the point)
As others have mentioned, before the rise of Youtube, the learning based channels on TV weren't doing so well in terms of popularity.
On a positive note though, our late stage capitalism era(plus half the millenial generation failing) has beaten any idea of "follow your dreams" out of young peoples souls. As a result, Gen-Z (and I suspect Gan Alpha) seem to be very pragmatic when they come of age and realize that the only real viable career is to hide in a closet/cube and be a coder or (surprisingly) enter the trades. Great for the US economy, terrible for the generation's self-esteem. (Gen-Z has one of the highest suicide rate of any generation in American history).
[2]:https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-teenage-gen-z-american-s...
But that's what everyone is asking for when they talk about TikTok. Either
1. You are concerned about the content exposed to Americans, in which case you cannot single out TikTok, you must also address Instagram and YouTube and prevent them from shoveling the incredibly stick tiktok garbage
2. You are just sinophobic and using this issue as a wedge to ban TikTok. Maybe you also work for Facebook and need to crush a competitior.
That's... not the same as a service on the internet, at all.
You're also talking about a completely different regulation regime. The FCC rules prohibit certain (fairly narrow?) things, largely "obscenity". A regulation that requires a company to actively promote certain things is... not even remotely the same.
This is an extremely misleading line of reasoning.
Publicly traded companies are not 'public' in the same sense as publicly owned airwaves, public (that is, government) employees, and public property. They don't cede any constitutional rights simply by offering equity for sale in the capital markets.
At any rate, there is a process for amending the Constitution, so if you want the First Amendment to change such that the federal government has a clear mandate to do this sort of thing, feel free to campaign for that. But just repeated violation by the state is not that process.
"recommendation algorithms operated by a publicly-owned company must bias towards intellectually stimulating content"
How would you even define "intellectually stimulating content" in juristical clear terms?
If I would want to increase the general level of science education (I strongly do), I would increase funding to schools and enable them to have fun experiments with the students of all sorts.
I love science, ever have and my teachers did the best they could, but even to me school was booring as hell.
My suspicion, which is mostly just me thinking out loud and is based on no real evidence, is that folks are (a) largely desensitized to stimulation due to aggressive "marketing" (in the loosest sense of the word - whether ads, click/viewbait, or other quasi-exploitative attention-grabbing things); and/or (b) have observed that, culturally, a lot of "dumb shit" is mainstream enough (in terms of critical mass within their social microcosm) to warrant conformity, and thus may be a preference that is adopted for identity or inclusivity purposes. Similarly, it may be seen as a pathway to some form of success or recognition (see: IG/YT influencers, tiktok fads, etc).
I'm sure other, much smarter folks have actual evidence or have performed studies (and I would be interested in learning more), but based on my personal experience, the above seems to hold true, generally speaking.
I'd say it depends on the politicians themselves. I'd say populists don't mind the people's stupidity and misery at all, because they turn that into an advantage for themselves, by very publicly providing, or even just promising, a short term relief for them. In this way, systemic issues like the welfare trap or wage slavery give them opportunity to inflate their popularity by organizing handouts, or by redirecting the people's misery to outgroups, such as non-heterosexuals, people of color, immigrants or other marginalized groups like people with addictions.