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Summary
A study found that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm favored Republican-leaning content during the 2024 U.S. presidential race.
TikTok, with over a billion active users worldwide, has become a key source of news, particularly for younger audiences.
Using 323 simulated accounts, researchers discovered that Republican-leaning users received 11.8% more aligned content than Democratic-leaning users, who were exposed to more opposing viewpoints.
The bias was largely driven by negative partisanship, with more anti-Democratic content recommended.
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Democrats could have a pretty powerful anti-establishment and anti-billionaire narrative in the near future, and it would probably be pretty successful.
But only if the Democrat billionaires and establishment get out of the way.
They published a Tax the Rich plan which removed the cap for social security so the rich paid their share, targeted unrelized gains on the top while lowering taxes for people who make less than 100k, and never raising taxes below 400k.
It doesn’t fucking matter what their platform is if we’re not actively promoting them because they aren’t pure enough they will still lose.
It doesn’t matter cause there is no press in America. Just play things for billionaires.
I don’t like anti-journalist blanket statements, it sounds like the shit you hear on Fox News and Maga Subreddits.
How would this narrative get out there?
Or we could stop hoping the Democrats take the lead and force them to follow the people. However, that would likely get ugly.
It also depends on the non-fascist elements of society putting aside their differences and working together, which has historically been a requirement and a stumbling block any time the populace wants to get out from under the oppression of the 1%.
You’re saying that as if the GOP Base cares about billionaires & the establishment?
No shit.
Gosh, so shocking.
Using a controlled experiment involving hundreds of simulated user accounts, the study found that Republican-leaning accounts received significantly more ideologically aligned content than Democratic-leaning accounts, while Democratic-leaning accounts were more frequently exposed to opposing viewpoints.
Does this mean the algorithm was designed to push a republican agenda? Or does the algorithm know that liberals are more likely to watch videos from the opposing side than conservatives?
I don’t doubt that billion dollar social media companies wanted Trump to win and put their fingers on the scale in whatever way they could. But I wonder how you can prove the algorithm is pushing an ideology at the expense of its users as opposed to the algorithm is just pushing the ideology that gets the most views from its users.
Does this mean the algorithm was designed to push a republican agenda? Or does the algorithm know that liberals are more likely to watch videos from the opposing side than conservatives?
Both of these things can be true.
A friend of mine likes to say, a systems goal is what it does in practice, not its design intent.
Sure, kinda like saying, if it looks like shit and it smells like shit, it’s probably shit. Apt metaphor.
I guess I’m just wondering about the intent. Like, is it possible to prove that an algorithm was designed to have a bias vs the bias is a natural result of what people spend their time watching. I am sure it’s the former, but how does one prove that without leaks from the inside.
The intent on e.g. YouTube is to optimise views. Radicalisation is an emergent outcome, as a result of more combatitive, controversial, and flashy content being more captivating in the medium term. This is documented to some extent in Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus, where he interviews a couple of insiders.
So no, the stated intent is not the bias (at least initially). The bias is an pathological outcome of optimising for ads.
But looking at some of Meta’s intentional actions more recently, it seems like maybe it can become an intentional outcome after the fact?
I think it’s a matter of How Many Coincidences Does It Take
If we’re assigning good faith to the TikTok algorithm.
Which - reading that out loud just sounds absurd.
TikTok being owned by the CCP and used for their political interests means they absolutely would do everything in their power to weaken the USA and NATO.
I mean, there’s also that the Democrats ran a campaign to ban Tiktok.
A yes Trumps ban. So Biden gets the credit band plans crash when Trump is president and Biden gets the credit.
…I miss r/aneurysmposting.
Biden promised not to enforce the ban, the ban was bipartisan, you’re being lied to.
It was not only bipartisan, it was, in fact, Trump’s idea initially.
And yet, the Democrats did run the campaign, and Biden was the one to actually sign the ban.
Seen that more after the election honestly
My TT algorithm was about as far from right wing as it could get
If your TT didn’t promote Kamala then it was promoting the Right Wing.
It was promoting Kamala. Was also promoting communism and hatred of Jill Stein. Pre-ban TikTok seemed to show you whatever you were interested in.
Yes my personal study came to the same conclusion.
Taiwan’s a goner.
Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
Democrats: “We’re going to obliterate your company and hand the scraps to our friends in Silicon Valley.”
Republicans: “Maybe we can cut you a deal if we win, so they won’t do that.”
Can’t believe TikTok has developed a conservative bias. Stunning.
Banning TikTok was widely supported and Bipartisan. It is run by the Chinese State and sends massive amounts of USA citizen data directly to China including contacts, audio recordings, message history, and photo library.
Biden promised not to enforce the TikTok ban just the same as Trump did.
Probably not by millions of mostly young people who use it… The Dems pushing that through in an election year probably didn’t help their chances…
It was good policy, pushed through by both parties, but wasnt implemented fast enough to be effective.
