Boy do I feel old if a short, low content PSA about the existence of RSS is considered "hacker news."
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> In contrast, a heuristic is an approach to solving problems without well-defined correct or optimal results.[2] For example, although social media recommender systems are commonly called "algorithms", they actually rely on heuristics as there is no truly "correct" recommendation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm
What are the consequences of conflating the two terms? I’m not sure yet.
Not really, as described in the quote you shared, it is common to refer to "recommendation systems" as "algorithms", even if its not actually such a thing.
There are plenty of examples of well-known aliases to concepts that obfuscate actual meaning in the English language, but they aren't wrong, as language is usage.