6 ms·

X is amplifying far-right accounts

46 points by saubeidl 1y ago

hoppp 1y ago
I think that's by design. Twitter has became a far-right platform since Musk took over and renamed it to X
- spwa4 1y ago
  This is seen on most other platforms as well. Facebook, instagram and perhaps most worryingly tiktok.
  - xnx 1y ago
    TikTok is far right? I know the fyp is very personalized, but I can't think of a single far right video I've seen. Occasionally I'll see comments on videos from people who don't like wind turbines, but that's about it.
    - spwa4 1y ago
      If I join and just select random interests I get shown low-effort obviously-AI anti-immigrant "songs". Not quickly, takes a little bit of browsing.
  - api 1y ago
    How much is intentional and how much is from the fact that far right content tends to be aimed at the amygdala? It’s usually crafted to inspire either outrage or fear. Those emotions have also been shown to maximize attention, and attention is what the algorithm seeks. It also tends to be polarizing. If you react with disgust because you disagree, the algorithm also picks that up as engagement. I do see more far right content on algorithmic social media and I’ve always suspected this is why. When I see lefty content it’s almost always when it’s of a similar form: outrage or fear bait. I rarely see any form of political content on those platforms that is thoughtful or positive, because that doesn’t maximize engagement. Of course I rarely look at any of those hellscapes anymore. All algorithmic social media is a worthless addictive attention trap.
- api 1y ago
  I was on it before then and it was overflowing with far right content then too. Not saying Musk hasn’t amplified that, but it’s always been full of it. IMHO the format is intrinsically biased toward shallow ideas that elicit an emotional reaction, and far right content is well suited. Like I said in another reply when I see lefty content it’s the same style. You almost never see deep ideas of substance on there because they don’t fit the medium. The Twitter style medium is inherently toxic, at least when used for anything but a human pub-sub bus to notify people of things. For discourse it selects only for the lowest most inflammatory kind. The same is true of Twitter’s imitators. The format is irredeemable.
  - acdha 1y ago
    I’d also add that there’s a lot of money in producing astro-turf content. All of those “influencers” effectively auditioning to see if they can go viral enough for one of the right-wing outfits to hire them, the bot farms promoting certain stories, etc. exist to employ voices and make it seem like their ideas are closer to evenly shared. There aren’t left-wing billionaires funding that so the same kind of network doesn’t exist.
  - LocalH 1y ago
    In other words, the format is intrinsically biased towards engagement of any type. Trolls get engagement.
Havoc 1y ago
And here I thought the home of mecha hitler would be neutral ground /s
NotGMan 1y ago
Obviously when Twitter was far left and full or censorship of the right such articles were not written.
- SirFatty 1y ago
  Sure..
- saubeidl 1y ago
  When was Twitter ever far-left? I don't recall a time when it was calling for public ownership of the means of production, overthrowing capitalism, working class uprisings or any other far-left platform...
  - spwa4 1y ago
    Ever notice how people refuse to accept that their view on politics has a leaning? That a leftists' idea of what constitutes far left might require tankies (ie. accounts that advocate violent imposition of communism/socialism by an external force like Russia or terrorism), whereas for rightist far left might mean as little as limits on enforcement of immigration rules. Just yesterday there was news about a protest in a cinema in Paris, where the police essentially invaded, and yes, beat people attempting to stop them into the hospital, and arrested "the core" of the protest. The police's story is that a small group tried to set the cinema on fire (very French of them, I must say, what's a protest without something on fire?), which is kind of confirmed by them arresting like 0.1% of the protestors, showing torches they found on the protestors, a big scorch mark on the floor, plus they let the protest continue. Of course, on the internet the only intention of the police using, granted, a LOT of force (as soon as they saw the torch, according to the police statement), preventing protestors from setting an old wooden Parisian building with more than 1000 people inside on fire was to protect Israeli aggression/colonialism (there was an Israeli concert happening) ... For now the newspapers and TV are a bit more on the sane side, but every year that passes more and more newspapers are joining the lunatics on the left or right (and truth be told, mostly on the left)
  - xigoi 1y ago
    Calls for the abolition of police were pretty common on old Twitter.
twatter 1y ago
I would be interested to see the methodology and the raw data for this analysis. Most importantly, how are they defining "far-right" and "extreme"?
- saubeidl 1y ago
  Sky News has a very well-made site going into more detail on methodology etc: https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464487 https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boo...
- RickJWagner 1y ago
  I was just wondering why it seems we see headlines about ‘far right’ issues, but seldom see headlines about ‘far left’ things. If there is a political center, shouldn’t the headlines carry a similar number of headlines ( at least over time? I can understand that at times one side or the other might be more news worthy, but honestly I just don’t remember a time where headlines discussed someone being ‘far left’)
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    It's because the far-right is in power all over the world, while I can't really think of a single far-left government anywhere. It's just not as big of an issue.
  - bdangubic 1y ago
    yea feels like media should do both so for every “far-right” story which are happening pretty much hourly the media should make up a “far-left” story to counter it, it is only fair :)
    - bediger4000 1y ago
      I think those moral panics about Bluesky count in that category. Conservatives don't get a fair hearing or get blocked there, etc etc.
itsoktocry 1y ago
They created 9 accounts for the study, and had "experts" qualify content as left or right wing. They could have at least tried before publishing this story for the 100th time.
- crtasm 1y ago
  >Sky News collaborated with digital consultancy firm 411 to train a Large Language Model - an AI tool - to categorise the content into political and apolitical categories. The definitions for those categories were created in consultation with multiple computer science academics and social media experts. The 5,981 accounts we categorised accounted for 67% of all of the posts in our dataset. See our full methodology here[0]. [0] https://news.sky.com/story/how-sky-news-investigated-xs-algorithm-for-political-bias-13463916 https://news.sky.com/story/how-sky-news-investigated-xs-algo...
  - itsoktocry 1y ago
    From the article: >"Specifically, the Sky News team ran a study where they created nine new Twitter/X accounts, three left-wing, three right-wing, and three politically neutral, and then tracked what content got dumped into their “For You” tabs on the Elon Musk-owned social media service during a one-month period in 2025"
    - crtasm 1y ago
      Yes, the link I provided gives much more information on their method including the names of the people who set the categories. I don't find any mention of how/if they separated the accounts by using different IPs/types of internet connection - seems like a bit of an omission.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
spwa4 1y ago
If you think this is bad, register a fresh tiktok account, especially if you're from Europe and know for example what French or German extreme-right content looks like. WTF.

46 points by saubeidl 1y ago

hoppp 1y ago

I think that's by design. Twitter has became a far-right platform since Musk took over and renamed it to X

spwa4 1y ago
This is seen on most other platforms as well. Facebook, instagram and perhaps most worryingly tiktok.
- xnx 1y ago
  TikTok is far right? I know the fyp is very personalized, but I can't think of a single far right video I've seen. Occasionally I'll see comments on videos from people who don't like wind turbines, but that's about it.
  - spwa4 1y ago
    If I join and just select random interests I get shown low-effort obviously-AI anti-immigrant "songs". Not quickly, takes a little bit of browsing.
- api 1y ago
  How much is intentional and how much is from the fact that far right content tends to be aimed at the amygdala? It’s usually crafted to inspire either outrage or fear. Those emotions have also been shown to maximize attention, and attention is what the algorithm seeks. It also tends to be polarizing. If you react with disgust because you disagree, the algorithm also picks that up as engagement. I do see more far right content on algorithmic social media and I’ve always suspected this is why. When I see lefty content it’s almost always when it’s of a similar form: outrage or fear bait. I rarely see any form of political content on those platforms that is thoughtful or positive, because that doesn’t maximize engagement. Of course I rarely look at any of those hellscapes anymore. All algorithmic social media is a worthless addictive attention trap.
api 1y ago
I was on it before then and it was overflowing with far right content then too. Not saying Musk hasn’t amplified that, but it’s always been full of it. IMHO the format is intrinsically biased toward shallow ideas that elicit an emotional reaction, and far right content is well suited. Like I said in another reply when I see lefty content it’s the same style. You almost never see deep ideas of substance on there because they don’t fit the medium. The Twitter style medium is inherently toxic, at least when used for anything but a human pub-sub bus to notify people of things. For discourse it selects only for the lowest most inflammatory kind. The same is true of Twitter’s imitators. The format is irredeemable.
- acdha 1y ago
  I’d also add that there’s a lot of money in producing astro-turf content. All of those “influencers” effectively auditioning to see if they can go viral enough for one of the right-wing outfits to hire them, the bot farms promoting certain stories, etc. exist to employ voices and make it seem like their ideas are closer to evenly shared. There aren’t left-wing billionaires funding that so the same kind of network doesn’t exist.
- LocalH 1y ago
  In other words, the format is intrinsically biased towards engagement of any type. Trolls get engagement.

Havoc 1y ago

And here I thought the home of mecha hitler would be neutral ground /s

NotGMan 1y ago

Obviously when Twitter was far left and full or censorship of the right such articles were not written.

SirFatty 1y ago
Sure..
saubeidl 1y ago
When was Twitter ever far-left? I don't recall a time when it was calling for public ownership of the means of production, overthrowing capitalism, working class uprisings or any other far-left platform...
- spwa4 1y ago
  Ever notice how people refuse to accept that their view on politics has a leaning? That a leftists' idea of what constitutes far left might require tankies (ie. accounts that advocate violent imposition of communism/socialism by an external force like Russia or terrorism), whereas for rightist far left might mean as little as limits on enforcement of immigration rules. Just yesterday there was news about a protest in a cinema in Paris, where the police essentially invaded, and yes, beat people attempting to stop them into the hospital, and arrested "the core" of the protest. The police's story is that a small group tried to set the cinema on fire (very French of them, I must say, what's a protest without something on fire?), which is kind of confirmed by them arresting like 0.1% of the protestors, showing torches they found on the protestors, a big scorch mark on the floor, plus they let the protest continue. Of course, on the internet the only intention of the police using, granted, a LOT of force (as soon as they saw the torch, according to the police statement), preventing protestors from setting an old wooden Parisian building with more than 1000 people inside on fire was to protect Israeli aggression/colonialism (there was an Israeli concert happening) ... For now the newspapers and TV are a bit more on the sane side, but every year that passes more and more newspapers are joining the lunatics on the left or right (and truth be told, mostly on the left)
- xigoi 1y ago
  Calls for the abolition of police were pretty common on old Twitter.

twatter 1y ago

I would be interested to see the methodology and the raw data for this analysis. Most importantly, how are they defining "far-right" and "extreme"?

saubeidl 1y ago
Sky News has a very well-made site going into more detail on methodology etc: https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boosting-the-british-right-13464487 https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boo...
RickJWagner 1y ago
I was just wondering why it seems we see headlines about ‘far right’ issues, but seldom see headlines about ‘far left’ things. If there is a political center, shouldn’t the headlines carry a similar number of headlines ( at least over time? I can understand that at times one side or the other might be more news worthy, but honestly I just don’t remember a time where headlines discussed someone being ‘far left’)
- saubeidl 1y ago
  It's because the far-right is in power all over the world, while I can't really think of a single far-left government anywhere. It's just not as big of an issue.
- bdangubic 1y ago
  yea feels like media should do both so for every “far-right” story which are happening pretty much hourly the media should make up a “far-left” story to counter it, it is only fair :)
  - bediger4000 1y ago
    I think those moral panics about Bluesky count in that category. Conservatives don't get a fair hearing or get blocked there, etc etc.

itsoktocry 1y ago

They created 9 accounts for the study, and had "experts" qualify content as left or right wing. They could have at least tried before publishing this story for the 100th time.

crtasm 1y ago
>Sky News collaborated with digital consultancy firm 411 to train a Large Language Model - an AI tool - to categorise the content into political and apolitical categories. The definitions for those categories were created in consultation with multiple computer science academics and social media experts. The 5,981 accounts we categorised accounted for 67% of all of the posts in our dataset. See our full methodology here[0]. [0] https://news.sky.com/story/how-sky-news-investigated-xs-algorithm-for-political-bias-13463916 https://news.sky.com/story/how-sky-news-investigated-xs-algo...
- itsoktocry 1y ago
  From the article: >"Specifically, the Sky News team ran a study where they created nine new Twitter/X accounts, three left-wing, three right-wing, and three politically neutral, and then tracked what content got dumped into their “For You” tabs on the Elon Musk-owned social media service during a one-month period in 2025"
  - crtasm 1y ago
    Yes, the link I provided gives much more information on their method including the names of the people who set the categories. I don't find any mention of how/if they separated the accounts by using different IPs/types of internet connection - seems like a bit of an omission.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

spwa4 1y ago

If you think this is bad, register a fresh tiktok account, especially if you're from Europe and know for example what French or German extreme-right content looks like. WTF.