In the UK, the spots are allocated to parties rather than candidates, and determined by past election (and to a lesser extent, current opinion poll) performance.
Regarding your first point, there's a very relevant 2-minute sketch from the radio show 'That Mitchell & Webb Sound' that makes a similar argument:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E
I suspect this is fundamentally the same as Amazon recommending things you've already bought. Even if the likelihood of rewatching/repurchasing is small, that probability must compare favourably to the chance that their algorithm will select a 'correct' unseen item to display.
My only knowledge of Henri Bergson is from perhaps a less intellectual source, the Monty Python sketch 'Spot the brain cell':
Cleese: ... Well your first question for the blow on the head this evening is: What great opponent of Cartesian dualism resists the reduction of psychological phenomena to physical states?
Jones: I don't know that!
Cleese: Well, have a guess.
Jones: Henri Bergson.
Cleese: Is the correct answer!
Jones: Ooh, that was lucky. I've never even heard of him.