That’s not what is usually meant by that. We had sorting and ranking for literally centuries before what is currently referred to as “the algorithm” on proprietary platforms. But I now understand what was meant, and that it wasn’t important to your point.
As a lemmy veteran, you should know better: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/03-votes-and-ranking.html
Call it what you want, it’s math to sort posts and comments.
Edit: even better link: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
That’s not what is usually meant by that. We had sorting and ranking for literally centuries before what is currently referred to as “the algorithm” on proprietary platforms. But I now understand what was meant, and that it wasn’t important to your point.