That's great! I do fear that only blockbuster articles are likely to get read that way, but I suppose that's no different from what social media now offers. Does the machine learning then offer you stuff from, say, the science or business section, and not just front page material? Sure does. Read the Post since Bezos bought it? Their reporting is fantastic, but their titles are now stuff like, "6 takeaways from the Alabama election". Horrible. I'll put up with it so long as the content is good, because I get what they're trying to do.They add their own clickbait-ish titles (it could be worse) because it really does get more people to read more articles.
It starts out by asking you to pick the topics and newspapers/magazines that you already like. This is my selection, for example: It then improves the suggestions based on what you read and the articles that you "heart" (their version of likes). I've taught it to feed me the articles from a magazine that would otherwise cost me €15/mo. It does pick out the best articles, but they're not always the objectively popular one. I told it that I liked my home town's local newspaper, so every once in a while I get an article from them (even though I'm probably one of the five people who use that app to read that newspaper).