TikTok's algorithm exhibited pro-Republican bias during 2024 presidential race, study finds
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.
https://www.psypost.org/tiktoks-algorithm-exhibited-pro-republican-bias-during-2024-presidential-race-study-finds/Open linkView original on lemmy.world442
Comments49
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?
Yeah the problem is that these narratives even though they are powerful — are often silenced by tech companies.
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.
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.
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.
And waited until last second to say he wouldn't enforce it
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.
But the cool tiktokers and swifties were supposed to save democracy, what happened?
Taiwan's a goner.
Huh? That didnt work...
Now that should do it.
Let's just ban corporate-controlled social media.
How about just media.
Personally I'd like some way to be able to access information from people who know more about various things that I do. If it's delivered to me and doesn't require me going and visiting them each individually, that would be a nice bonus.
You just need to keep screaming "China! China! China! They hacked our elections! We have to stop China!" and either you'll get something banned eventually.
If by "Socialist" you mean the Chinese government then both are true. The CCP backed the Trump campaign from start to finish. Weakening the USA and NATO is a dream come true to them.
Even the Tankie communities here on Lemmy were praising Trump and trashing Biden and the DNC.
Pre-ban/restoration I used to watch a lot of TikTok. If anything I saw very little if any right wing content, and more anti right wing content. Maybe I was too far left and deemed a lost cause.
If it didn't actively promote Kamala the same way it actively promoted Trump then it was biased by definition.
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.
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.
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.
Fuck off with this bullshit.
Yeah, right, don't believe your ears, and your eyes, just believe what dear leaders tells you too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is delusional. Majority of voters don't think about this nonsense at all.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5198616/2024-presidential-election-results-republican-shift
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/democrats-ipsos-poll-abortion-lgbt.html