A study found TikTok's algorithm recommended more Republican-aligned content during the 2024 US election. Republican accounts saw more like-minded content, while Democratic accounts were shown more opposing views. This suggests a pro-Republican skew.

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.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    626·
    20 hours ago

    They created 323 “sock puppet” accounts—fake accounts programmed to simulate user behavior—across three politically diverse states: Texas, New York, and Georgia. Each account was assigned a political leaning: Democratic, Republican, or neutral (the control group)…

    To analyze the political content of the recommended videos, the researchers downloaded the English transcripts of videos when available (22.8% of unique videos). They then used a system involving three large language models—GPT-4o, Gemini-Pro, and GPT-4—to classify each video. The language models answered questions about whether the video was political, whether it concerned the 2024 U.S. elections or major political figures, and what the ideological stance of the video was (pro-Democratic, anti-Democratic, pro-Republican, anti-Republican, or neutral). The majority vote of the three language models was used as the final classification for each question.

    Imagine believing one super sketchy study from some dudes in the UAE ffs. Even if this is accurate (highly doubtful), it might be because kamalacaust didn’t campaign in swing states for example. There’s no real evidence that this is real and, even if it’s real, there’s no evidence that’s it’s due to bias at TikTok.

    However there is plenty of evidence that people are trying to ban TikTok because it reveals unfiltered information about palestine, etc.

    • Glide@lemmy.ca
      5·
      18 hours ago

      You quoted a bunch of stuff from the study like there’s a problem with it. If you’re going to attempt to dismiss the study as bullshit, you should probably try finding evidence of bullshit, rather than pointing and screaming, like we all understand whatever incredibly biased point it is you think you have.

    • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      25·
      19 hours ago

      The problem is literally no one cares about Palestine. They should, but they don’t.

      You chose the worst fucking hill to die on. Some brown people getting exploded in a place most people can’t find in a map on the other side of the world is nothing to an average working person compared to their rent, utility or grocery bills going up.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        42·
        19 hours ago

        The problem is literally no one cares about Palestine.

        Quite a few people care about Palestine. That’s a “problem” in so far as there are no pro-Palestinian political currents in the American political scene. So you’ve got these people eager to support candidates, but no candidates for them to support.

        You chose the worst fucking hill to die on.

        At some point, “I’m going to vote for the second biggest pro-genocide party on the ticket” isn’t the message that gets people to the polls. Dems lost 15M votes over four years, as they shed their reputation of competency and compassion for one of compromise and corruption. Trying to force TikTok to sell its operations to an American Tech Company, on the grounds that it was too friendly to Palestinians, was just one more straw on the camel’s back.

        compared to their rent, utility or grocery bills going up.

        Dems couldn’t bring themselves to do anything about that either. All they could do was inflate the rate of profit enjoyed by the NASDAQ. And once they’d accomplished that task, they were of no more use to the Silicon Valley bag men.