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
    6·
    1 day 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·
      1 day 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.