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TikTok's algorithm exhibited pro-Republican bias during 2024 presidential race
- redleggedfrog 2y agoStupid things for stupid people, no mystery.
- draw_down 2y ago[dead]
- hassleblad23 2y agoEveryone gets a vote.
- pizza 2y agoThere's a public relations firm somewhere out there that really hit the ball out of the park for you to have this knee-jerk reaction, don't you think?
- whalesalad 2y agoOf course it did. This is why so many want it out of the US. It's a propaganda vehicle for the CCP. Our citizens have an IV drip of bullshit feeding them 24x7. This is why Trump wants to save it. Back in his first term he tried to destroy it[0]. Flash forward to now, he openly acknowledges that it helped him win[1]. He doesn't want to lose that influence if it gets dismantled, so of course he's now talking about introducing a sovereign wealth fund and use it to buy tik tok[2]. - [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/28/us/politics/trump-tik-tok-ban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/28/us/politics/trump-tik-tok... - [1] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5042241-president-elect-trump-warm-spot-tiktok/ https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5042241-president-elec... - [2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-orders-plan-for-a-united-states-sovereign-wealth-fund/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-pr...
- daveguy 2y agoAnd obviously China preferred Trump in office (of course they wouldn't admit it, because whoever China backs helps the other party). The more batty the US is in international relations the more our soft power declines and China's soft power rises. Destruction of USAID was a huge win for China. If Trump effectively controls both Tik Tok and Twitter, huge numbers of people under 30 will only know what Trump wants them to know.
- eastbound 2y agoWhich is why Trump added tariffs on China. To… to blur his tracks. The best action is to do the opposite of what you want to do, so people don’t know what you’re doing. This, or China supports the Dems, and everything else becomes logical. But let’s start the narrative that Trump supports China by banning their apps and products.
- daveguy 2y agoHahaha. "banning". Only Trump could save a company from being banned, try to buy it with US tax dollars, and have his stooges claim he's against the company.
- ryandrake 2y agoForeign adversaries don't care about political party. They want chaos, internal division, and institutional destruction, and for the moment, that means Trump. If there was a viable candidate from BlueTeam who promised to sow chaos and dismantle the government, you can bet they'd support them just as happily.
- latentcall 2y agoCurious as when I was still using TikTok I was getting pro-Trump content in between my usual communist/worker’s rights or pro-Palestinian content.
- java-man 2y agoKarl Marx gave the proletariat eleven zeppelins, yo! https://xkcd.com/992/ https://xkcd.com/992/
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoThat suggests a clumsy PAC-driven campaign to shove a candidate into your feed, without actually doing anything meaningful to update the algorithm for general Republican/conservative propaganda. Part of it might have also been the (remarkably cynical and dishonest) Arabs for Trump movement, directly linking Trump campaign stuff to pro-Palestinian viewers.
- jncfhnb 2y ago> pro-Palestinian content This is an issue heavily pushed by the Republican Party
- thrance 2y agoUhh no? Neither party held a pro-palestian position, Trump told Netanyahou to "finish the job" [1] before the election. [1] https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/artc-trump-wants-israel-to-finish-the-job-in-the-next-eight-weeks https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/artc-t...
- jncfhnb 2y agoIt went both ways. They actively attempted to amplify the narrative that the war in Gaza was entirely on Israel and that it was the democrats fault despite relatively no interest from the republicans in actually helping those in Gaza. It was a successful campaign largely. This was a divisive issue for more lefty dems.
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- AnEro 2y agoWeird to say but could be a relevant anecdote, as a trans person, that avoids politics in my socials but watches trans creators. I've never gotten a platform that doesn't show me the trans negative politics in my feeds after engaging with trans creators. I find I only get the positive politics AFTER I ignore or dislike the negatives ones.
- nemomarx 2y agothe community doesn't help by trying to dunk on the anti trans stuff a little too much but I do assume it's engagement bait
- AnEro 2y agoI'd say with the reverse being very true as well would largely just make it so once you get anything close to touching the topic it tosses out which ever side they think you'll engage with the most. For more anecdotal context, my other interests lean into a demographic/stereotype of an upper middle class pilates/health/cleangirl girliepop. Which from my experience they centrist/ambivalent maybe skew left but not inherently pro trans.
- mezzie2 2y ago> For more anecdotal context, my other interests lean into a demographic/stereotype of an upper middle class pilates/health/cleangirl girliepop. Which from my experience they centrist/ambivalent maybe skew left but not inherently pro trans. I'm not sure this is accurate, speaking as someone whose social circle has a lot of people in that group and who also sometimes ends up on that side of the algo. For various reasons, it's only socially acceptable to be outspokenly on the left in that group (more so for women over the age of 25/30), but there's a sizable minority who either disagree with certain topics or are more aligned with the right, but they aren't going to jeopardize their social circles or (particularly in the case of content creators) their audience. It's the girl version of the men who put 'apolitical' on dating apps to hide being a conservative because they don't want to limit their dating prospects.
- duke_sam 2y agoNot that I think TikTok is particularly spotless but this sounds like the result of an algorithm learning what groups will engage with, ie democratic leaning accounts were more likely to do _something_ with republican content than vice versa.
- guerrilla 2y agoThis is interesting but I still think we have some responsibility here. What if most people hold some view in a low-grade kind of way but algorithms like this could accidentally (or intentionally) amplify it to the point of genocide. The story of Rwanda is well known and we can imagine it being much worse if we're not careful with this kind of technology.
- notahacker 2y agoYeah. I remember Facebook used to appear to show me more of certain stuff that annoyed me (not political stuff so much as scammy stuff) because I hovered or even reported it. The most naive and high-level keyword based association is going to link both pro and anti trans stuff as the same general category too (another Facebook thing was the massive overlap between history and really dumb "alternative history")
- IncreasePosts 2y agoWhy is it called bias, as if the results should be even? Would we say that there is a bias in TikTok to show interesting videos, instead of boring videos? I guess you could describe it as such, but the term carries an implication of impropriety with it, as if what displays bias should rightfully not display bias. Liberals love consuming Trump content, maybe even more than conservatives. Sort of like the Howard Stern effect. Because after they do, they can go post on Twitter and reddit about how stupid Trump is. Conservatives didn't have that with Harris. Maybe because all of her content was so scripted and her entire personality that we were allowed to see was designed by committee, and frankly there was just much less content. Trump would go on a 4 hour tirade about some random thing like Greenland. Meanwhile, Harris was tightly controlled by her handlers, only giving "safe" interviews, probably thinking that playing it safe and not fumbling somewhere would be the path to the white house.
- 9283409232 2y ago> Conservatives didn't have that with Harris. Conservatives spent days nitpicking every single thing they could about Harris and would just invent things about Walz. Tim Walz's son cried and conservative media and social networks ran that into the ground for weeks. Acting like MAGA didn't say anything about Harris/Walz is pure delusion.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoI think that shows conservatives were so starved for rage content that they needed to latch onto the side-show of a side-show in order to scratch that itch. Sequestering your candidate away from any kind of challenge certainly is a strategy. I never said MAGA didn't say anything about Harris/walz. Is that what you took away from my post?
- 9283409232 2y ago> Liberals love consuming Trump content, maybe even more than conservatives. Sort of like the Howard Stern effect. Because after they do, they can go post on Twitter and reddit about how stupid Trump is. > Conservatives didn't have that with Harris. Yes that is what I took from this. > Sequestering your candidate away from any kind of challenge certainly is a strategy. Interviews with Fox News and a public debate does not read as running away from challenge. She is not the one who ran from the debates.
- spinach 2y agoAnd many platforms had a pro-Democrat lean, especially in the 2020 election. Blaming tiktok seems like scapegoating instead of looking introspectively at the Dem's failings like having a weak leader and pushing various insane ideologies.
- kenjackson 2y agoWhat insane ideologies do Dems push? That seems like a weird characterization of either party, although fits Trump specifically -- and I think a lot of Republicans are actually afraid of him.
- ikety 2y agoPeople can't make up their minds, did dems push insane ideology or did they fail to stray far enough from the status quo? I'd argue they ran one of the least controversial campaigns in comparison to the current global political climate. I think those in disagreement were successfully convinced by the opposing party. Trump's first few weeks makes it clear he was the big mover and shaker.
- twiclo 2y agoI can make up my mind. They pushed insane ideologies. At the convention the other day not a single nominee said, "Maybe we shouldn't fund sex changes for illegal immigrant prisoners." In fact they supported it.
- ikety 2y agoYou've been successfully convinced that this is not only a primary concern for democrats and their voters, but also that this would affect you or anyone you know in any conceivable way.
- moduspol 2y agoWe question the leadership and judgment of someone who would take such a position, and refuse to walk it back. It is not the case that we expect our lives to change materially as a result of taxpayer-funded illegal immigrant sex change operations.
- peepeepoopoo106 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ahs1 2y agowhat about the other apps?
- jsheard 2y agoWell X has a pretty clear slant as of late. I've tried making a fresh burner account a few times to see what the default algorithm is like and surprise, it's dominated by Elon Musk himself, his fanboys/orbiters, and political content which strongly aligns with his views. Even when dissenting political content slips into the feed it's usually still about Elon Musk, the algorithm surfaces more mentions of him than the actual president.
- pizza 2y agoSame. Made a burner account, follow nothing and nobody, tweet nothing, like nothing, days later I check in on it and I have like a dozen notifications of tweets from the likes of Alex Jones and Donald Trump Jr.
- erentz 2y agoBenn Jordan did a good video that covered the bots and bias on X recently. Don't know if it or the papers were submitted here before (anyone feel free to submit it not): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ5XN_mJE8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ5XN_mJE8Y
- api 2y agoWhat was formerly Twitter is now some guy's private web site, just a guy with a whole lot of money.
- bigfishrunning 2y agoIt was before too, but it was a different guy
- NickC25 2y agoIt was publicly owned....not one individual.
- sapientiae3 2y agoThis makes sense - as Paul Graham mentioned in his essay from January [1] “outrage means traffic”. No-one gets more outraged than left leaning viewers watching Trump videos. [1] https://paulgraham.com/woke.html https://paulgraham.com/woke.html
- nayuki 2y ago> outrage means traffic Which CGP Grey also described a decade ago: https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc?t=200 https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc?t=200 "This Video Will Make You Angry" [2015-03-10]
- carlosdp 2y agoThat's not algorithmic bias, that's a large delta in content quality. Videos coming out of the Harris camps were milquetoast in comparison to the Trump camp. Of course those videos get more attention, from people that like him and hate him, and therefore get pushed more by the algorithm.
- ziddoap 2y ago>Of course those videos get more attention [...] and therefore get pushed more by the algorithm. From the article: "These differences were consistent across all three states and could not be explained by differences in engagement metrics like likes, views, shares, comments, or followers."
- skywhopper 2y agoThat was certainly my experience with it. Overwhelmingly so, even. Not just “Republican” per se, but all sorts of reality-denying nonsense, propaganda, and clearly foreign-influenced trolling. Depressing enough that I removed the app that I once loved to use.
- gmd63 2y agoThe main use case of technology and AI is to sway public opinion. Elon Musk is one of the richest men in the world and that's where he spends most of his focus. If you're building technology, know that this is the endgame, and proceed with caution. The amount of deceit per dollar you can generate today is profoundly inexpensive when compared to the entirety of human history. Sadly, our cowardly tech giants are the antithesis of the morals espoused in comic books they grew up on, seeking to abdicate all responsibility as they achieve unprecedented power.
- xiii1408 2y agoIt's another sock puppet study: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17831 https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17831 Very similar methodology to an earlier study the government cited in their case against TikTok: https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-The-CCPs-Digital-Charm-Offensive.pdf https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-... There are a number of issues with these studies, one being that the way the sock puppet bots interact with content is not exactly organic. Typically they search for content in a conditioning phase, followed by random scrolling during which the recommended videos are collected and classified by an LLM. Modern recommendation algorithms famously work by examining how long and how users engage with content, and there's none of that going on here. Still, the methodology itself and the use of LLMs to classify content is clever and probably about the best we can get. Also, even if there _is_ a bias, it doesn't tell us why. Are the recommendations intentionally spiked, or is this simply the recommendation strategy that maximizes profit? (Or that the recommendation model thinks will maximize profit?) It's very difficult to tell, which is part of what makes these models dangerous and also part of what makes them difficult to regulate. On a sidenote, TikTok (and presumably other content platforms) _really_ does not like these studies, as demonstrated by them nerfing search functionality after the second study above was released to prevent researchers using these techniques in the future. I haven't read the study in detail yet, but it will be interesting to see how the team at NYU Abu Dhabi adapted their methodology.
- ziddoap 2y agoWhile I am skeptical of what reasonable conclusions can be drawn from a study like this, they explain the methodology in the article. You said: >Typically [...] followed by random scrolling during which the recommended videos are collected and classified [...] Modern recommendation algorithms famously work by examining how long and how users engage with content, and there's none of that going on here. But they claim that videos are watched, not just collected from the recommendation page. "The accounts watched 10 videos, followed by a one-hour pause, and repeated this process for six days"
- xiii1408 2y agoPerhaps I should have been more clear. It's TikTok, so of course the only way to collect recommendations is to watch videos. Some studies watch the whole video, some just watch part of it, but it's TikTok, so fundamentally you're watching a video.
- mcosta 2y agoDoes this means republicans did better propaganda than democrats?
- HumblyTossed 2y agoI don't know how to ask this without striking ire, but how much of this was simply due to Trump's ... um... personality?
- plorg 2y agoThe title here is deceptive and I'm not sure the study authors did a good job of characterizing their results. They found that Democrats were likely to see less Democrat-aligned content than Republicans were to see Republican-aligned content. But Republican-aligned as a category included both pro-Republican and anti-Democrat content and the big difference was that Democrats saw less anti-Republican and more anti-Democrat videos. Which may seem like a conspiracy until you imagine the amount of anti-Harris/"uncommitted" content that was on TikTok during the election cycle. Even if you think that have an edge to the a Republican ticket I don't think you could reasonably describe a video by a DSA guy decrying the bombing of Gaza as a pro-Republican video. Perhaps more succinctly, there was more anti-Democrat material from both sides (and the binary clarification system is reductive in a way that obscures what's going on)