In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet …
Content warning violence/death mention
Through the algorithmic mediations of Google's online mall, fascist propaganda found a receptive reader.
Roof's fateful encounter points to another meaning of predatory inclusion. Online malls are predatory not just in how they include but in who they include. The Council of Conservative Citizens would've had trouble reaching a wide audience through traditional media. But they managed to grab a high-ranking spot on Google's search results, presumably through the use of SEO techniques. This kind of manipulation turns out to be quite common, especially in social media. And it is central to how online malls generate inequality.
Online malls are inequality machines in part because they offer new opportunities to political forces committed to promoting inequality. (..).
Seeing conservatives as radicals helps explain a theme found throughout their history: their remarkable creativity with the media technologies of the time. In every era, they are "innovation opportunists" (..).
— Internet for the People by Ben Tarnoff (Page 138 - 139)
There's a lot to unpack here, and I won't go into everything (like: would they have had trouble with traditional media?).
For me, the point here is that this is a clear cut example of engineers building stuff without thinking of the harms it can cause: search engines are useful, necessary even! SEO makes sense in a world with search engines! Ooops, people died because of SEO.
It's not quite that simple, though. We can't blame a hammer manufacturer for someone misappropriating a hammer for murder. We can blame a gun manufacturer, though, because guns are intended for hurting and killing.
One of the issues with tech is, it's often unclear to the engineers who make a tool whether it's a hammer or a gun. The moment you're thinking "it's a gun, but only for harming bad guys", think again about how it may be abused.