Exactly, if people can demand this of Google and Facebook it means they can demand this of every single company! People act like FAANG are the only companies with any influence and any user data.

The analogy doesn't quite hold. We can see the outputs of the editorial meetings because they're released to the entire public. Whereas the outputs of Google and Facebook models are tuned to each individual, it would be an incredible privacy violation to share those with the government.

But this creates a problem of incentives. In mass media, bad behaviour is highly observable and more likely to be punished or regulated. For example, Australia has defamation laws that are notoriously slanted against the media. Political communication is illegal without the name and address of the individual who authorised it. And so on.

But when each of us sees a different feed, it is impossible to both easily detect violations of law and to preserve individual privacy. Asking to see the algorithm at least allows for correction of potential biases. I expect however that increasingly, these companies will be required to internalise that regulatory function on pain of heavy fines.