I believe they do this the same way they do traffic jams, by seeing how many android phones are at the location vs. average.

Yeah, in an article talking about how news stories about crime often show pictures of tents, they pointed out that the photo is of a crime scene, but the crime was not committed by those living in the tents.

I had a (wonderful) colleague who would call a big fuck up an “opportunity for excellence”.

Culture comes from the top.

They don’t do it to everyone. Some people get put in test groups that get ‘nice’ algorithms that don’t try to make you angry, so they can measure the effect on their revenue.