Facebook’s algorithms increasingly in sight of US lawmakers

US lawmakers investigating how Facebook Inc. and other online platforms shape users’ world views are considering new rules for the artificial intelligence programs blamed for spreading malicious content.

This legislative push is taking on more urgency since a whistle-blower revealed thousands of pages of internal documents revealing how Facebook employees knew that the company’s algorithms prioritizing growth and engagement were driving people to more divisive and harmful content.

Every automated action on the internet — from ranking content and displaying search results to offering recommendations or showing ads — is controlled by computer code written by engineers. Some of these algorithms take simple inputs like words or video quality to show certain outputs,