From self-harm to terrorism, online recommendations cast a deadly shadow | John Naughton

The tragic case of Molly Russell has highlighted their malign influenceMy eye was caught by a headline in Wired magazine: “When algorithms think you want to die”. Below it was an article by two academic researchers, Ysabel Gerrard and Tarleton Gillespie, about the “recommendation engines” that are a central feature of social media and e-commerce sites.Everyone who uses the web is familiar with these engines. A recommendation algorithm is what prompts Amazon to tell me tha