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.

  • 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.