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The political effects of X's feed algorithm

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Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#51

Post by jmyeet »

I blame Google for a lot of this. Why? Because they more than anyone else succedded in spreading the propaganda that "the algorithm" was like some unbiased even all-knowing black box with no human influence whatsoever. They did this for obvious self-serving reasons to defend how Google properties ranked in search results.

But now people seem to think newsfeeds, which increase the influence of "the algorithm", are just a result of engagement and (IMHO) nothing could be further from the truth.

Factually accurate and provable statements get labelled "misinformation" (either by human intervention or by other AI systems ostensibly created to fight misinformation) and thus get lower distribution. All while conspiracy theories get broad distribution.

Even ignoring "misinformation", certain platforms will label some content as "political" and other content as not when a "political" label often comes down to whether or not you agree with it.

One of the most laughable incidents of putting a thumb on the scale was when Grok started complaining about white genocide in South Africa in completely unrelated posts [1].

I predict a coming showdown over Section 230 about all this. Briefly, S230 establishes a distinction between being a publisher (eg a newspaper) and a platform (eg Twitter) and gave broad immunity from prosecution for the platform for user-generated content. This was, at the time (the 1990s), a good thing.

But now we have a third option: social media platforms have become de facto publishers while pretending to be platforms. How? Ranking algorithms, recommendations and newsfeeds.

Think about it this way: imagine you had a million people in an auditorium and you were taking audience questions. What if you only selected questions that were supportive of the government or a particular policy? Are you really a platform? Or are you selecting user questions to pretend something has broad consensus or to push a message compatible with the views of the "platform's" owner?

My stance is that if you, as a platform, actively suppresses and promotoes content based on politics (as IMHO they all do), you are a publisher not a platform in the Section 230 sense.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/elon-musk...

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#52

Post by guywithahat »

jmugan wrote: post #17

Oddly enough, X is the only platform i've been able to teach to not show me culture war stuff, from either side. It just shows me AI in the "For You."

I have the same thought, my X algo has become less political than HackerNews. I suppose it depends on how you use it but my feed is entirely technical blogs, memes, and city planning/construction content

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#53

Post by prometheus76 »

cyrusradfar wrote: post #23

Lovely thought Ben. Good to hear from you! I spent a lot of my life and money thinking about building better algorithms (over five years). We have a bit of a chicken / egg problem. Is it the algorithm or is it the preference of the Users which is the problem. I'd argue the latter. What I learned which was counter-intuitive was that the vast majority of people aren't interested in thinking hard. This community, in lar…

[flagged]

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#54

Post by dylan604 »

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #32
fluoridation wrote: post #11

I honestly don't understand how or why people are using Twitter to keep up with the news. The only thing I use it for is to follow artists, and even that has been going down in recent weeks with most of my favorites moving over to BlueSky. Maybe I'm just a long-winded idiot, but the character limits barely let me have a conversation on either platform. How are people consuming news like this? It just baffles me how d…

My feed (UK based) seems to give me the major news stories well before the mainstream (BBC), and I'm taking days if not weeks in some cases. Now it could be that's how the mainstream decides to cover a particular story? What's worrying is when a story is all over X but isn't covered. To give an example, the recent protests in Iran where being covered on X but the BBC was silent for weeks before finally covering the s…

Could it also be that "mainstream" news are actually trying to verify information and/or obtain confirmation from other sources? All of that is done in an attempt to avoid promoting false information. People tweeting do not do any of that

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#55

Post by sonofhans »

cyrusradfar wrote: post #23

Lovely thought Ben. Good to hear from you! I spent a lot of my life and money thinking about building better algorithms (over five years). We have a bit of a chicken / egg problem. Is it the algorithm or is it the preference of the Users which is the problem. I'd argue the latter. What I learned which was counter-intuitive was that the vast majority of people aren't interested in thinking hard. This community, in lar…

> Algorithms serve what Users engage with, if the Users were to no longer be interested in ragebait, clickbait, focused on thoughtful content -- the algorithms would adapt.

Algorithms have been adapted; they are successful at their goals. We’ve put some of the smartest people on the planet on this problem for the last 20 years.

Humans are notoriously over-sensitive to threats; we see them where they barely exist, and easily overreact. Modern clickbait excels at presenting mundane information as threatening. Of course this attracts more attention.

Also, loud noises attract more attention than soft noise. This doesn’t mean that humans prefer an environment full of loud noises.

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#56

Post by Herring »

jongjong wrote: post #15
barfiure wrote: post #3

This person is confused. Trump was a well known pussy grabber for decades. Epstein was anything but a secret, it seems, given how many politicians and celebrities and moguls he rubbed elbows with. Jerry stopping by the island for a lemonade and a spot of lunch with his high school aged girls? Yeah. It comes down to this: you can have visibility into things and yet those in power won’t care whatsoever what you may thi…

This is a defeatist attitude. Don't know what bubble you're in but these official revelations are driving real change in mine. It's kind of subtle at this point but it's the kind of change that cannot be undone.

Unfortunately speed often matters when it comes to outcomes. Eg if you get a cancer diagnosis like Jobs, you probably shouldn’t waste a year drinking juices and doing acupuncture.

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#58

Post by daveguy »

Herring wrote: post #29
spankalee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. The CEO is opening posting white supremacist content like it's Stormfront. If you don't support that, you should get out.

I don’t know which country you’re in, but in the US Trump won the popular vote. Plenty of people here are perfectly happy with Stormfront.

Less than you might think.

He didn't win a majority of the vote, just a plurality. And less than 2 of 3 eligible voters actually voted. So he got about 30% of the eligible population to vote for "yay grievance hate politics!" Which is way more than it should be, but a relatively small minority compared to the voter response after all ambiguity about the hate disappeared. This is why there's been a 20+ point swing in special election outcomes since Trump started implementing all the incompetent corrupt racist asshatery.

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#59

Post by sonofhans »

prometheus76 wrote: post #53
cyrusradfar wrote: post #23

Lovely thought Ben. Good to hear from you! I spent a lot of my life and money thinking about building better algorithms (over five years). We have a bit of a chicken / egg problem. Is it the algorithm or is it the preference of the Users which is the problem. I'd argue the latter. What I learned which was counter-intuitive was that the vast majority of people aren't interested in thinking hard. This community, in lar…

[flagged]

I’d expect this to be down-voted too. It has nothing to do with the article and makes no concrete claims. It’s easy to slag anything in vague terms, but it adds nothing to this discussion.

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#60

Post by rl3 »

cyrusradfar wrote: post #23

Lovely thought Ben. Good to hear from you! I spent a lot of my life and money thinking about building better algorithms (over five years). We have a bit of a chicken / egg problem. Is it the algorithm or is it the preference of the Users which is the problem. I'd argue the latter. What I learned which was counter-intuitive was that the vast majority of people aren't interested in thinking hard. This community, in lar…

>This community, in large part, is an exception where many members pride themselves on intellectually challenging material.

That's not the norm. We're not the norm.

I recommend against putting HN on a pedestal. It just leads to disappointment.

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