4 types of algos that can drive startup growth

Social media conspiracy theorists are marketers too.

Ultimately, they're trying to peg a narrative onto a handful of rather dry statistical engines, that help prioritize what content you consume--by catering to human nature and natural drives our brains already have.

Reverse date sorted, i.e. blogs, podcasts. Focus on 'what's new', what's the latest, what's happening. This is the digital logic of why news and PR work.
Linkbacks: especially pagerank and variations used by search engine: collective voting machine that helps prioritize relevance around specific topics and words. It helps figure out 'what's good'. In fact, many consumers treat organic search as a credible source of information about everything, including products.
Social graph: who are your friends and what are they reading/liking/upvoting/following/sharing. At a simple level, this is about what's 'viral', what's easily consumable, what's pleasant. When it's too easy to share, it also becomes easy to sharing/resharing of inflammatory, in appropriate, or extremist content.
Recommendation engines: from spotify to tiktok, this is what consumers find most potentially objectionable when combined with paid acquistion. Companies collect their behavioral data, feed it into a statistical engine, and then spit out what's most relevant. In contrast, it has a lot of value to businesses of all sizes, especially when it's possible to 'buy attention' of highly targeted and similar interest groups.
By mixing and matching, you can figure out which acquisition channel will work for your particular market segment.