every single morning when i open the app this person or their sister is at the very top of my feed. every single day. i wonder what’s going on with the algorithm that causes this

I suspect it's because the Merkle team is hoping to get more content like this on the network and they even went so far as to onboard these specific users.  Which means they are probably engaging with every post they see from these users.

The Merkle team are likely some of the highest signal users in their algol...so this kind of stuff always goes to the top.

It got to the point where I actually muted these users because they kept showing up despite many attempts to "show less like this".

Startup artist seeking inspiration.  Champion of /bcard

i hope this isn’t the case but it just goes back to my main point: the opinions of the team should not be the opinions of the platform or algorithm, that’s not sustainable and it doesn’t appeal to all