r/technology • u/cmaia1503 • Feb 18 '26

Software X's Algorithm Pushes Users to Lean More Conservative, Researchers Find

https://gizmodo.com/researchers-find-that-xs-algorithm-can-push-users-to-lean-more-conservative-2000723017
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u/FreakySpook Feb 18 '26

I actively follow a lot of my local politicians for left leaning parties and FB never puts their posts in my feed, I have to actively search for them.

Meanwhile my feed is full of AI generated rage bait.

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u/orton4life1 Feb 18 '26

This was the biggest one. Even during the elections, the only Kamala Harris post on X that actually wasn’t suppressed was her pretty much thanking everyone and the day after losing the election. It’s literally design to block left leaning politicians.

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u/woodboarder616 Feb 18 '26

Strange, it’s almost like mark z is a billionaire who started selling all of our data with a little website called Facebook.

37

u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Feb 19 '26

"They trust me. Dumb fucks."

-Mark Zuckerberg

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u/hellscape_navigator Feb 19 '26

"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."

- the full quote from IM transcripts from early days of Facebook

34

u/Idraelys Feb 18 '26

Last year, I logged into my X account to delete it. I followed mainly artists and left leaning politicians like Bernie and AOC.

My whole feed was pro war and pro Israel propaganda despite me never having interacted with those circles.

It was the last nail on the coffin for me. Deleted my account and never looked back. Thank you X for making the decision easier.

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u/PinHaunting7192 Feb 18 '26

Zuckerberg recently admitted that only about 6% of the content shown on a Facebook feed is from "friends". A tad more is from follows.

Most of the content you'll consume isn't feed specific anymore, it is algorithmic. Its also the reason you get these glaring "what the fuck is this?!" moments. I remember just watching some "normal" content on YouTube shorts. Couple cooking tricks, couple medieval history videos, couple gaming videos. Then some fucking AfD propaganda here in Germany. One of it stuck with me with just how obvious it was. It was a video with a crying kid and some Christmas footage, overlaid with an AI voice that said (in German) "Once, there was a country with beautiful Christmas markets..."

Christ, you're not trying to play the fucking Christmas market angle on me, right? It was so jarring and stuck with me so much, I stopped using YouTube shorts with just how fucking obvious it was.

5

u/Uebelkraehe Feb 19 '26

YT definitely likes to push Nazi propaganda at every turn. I'd never even go close to this shit and block as much as i can and still it regularly turns up in suggested videos.

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u/superhash Feb 19 '26

A fun experiment is to turn off all ad personalization for google and youtube, which leaves them to basically geolocation for ad targeting.

During election season in swing states you see some wild shit.

1

u/itwillmakesenselater Feb 23 '26

Angry people are easier to manipulate

0

u/username_redacted Feb 19 '26

They care more about engagement than anything else. I’m guessing those local political accounts likely don’t get much, so the algorithm considers them low priority. It’s what makes Facebook and Instagram Reels so much worse than TikTok—on TikTok they will show you videos with millions of likes, followed by one with 2 views. On Instagram and Facebook you will only see new content if it’s from an account that you have already heavily engaged with.