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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

#71

Post by apparent »

daveguy wrote: post #58
Herring wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"If everyone had voted, Trump still would have won" (by an even wider margin)

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#72

Post by cyrusradfar »

stetrain wrote: post #47
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…

> Is it the algorithm or is it the preference of the Users which is the problem. I'd argue the latter. > Algorithms serve what Users engage with User engagement isn't actually the same thing as user preference, even though I think many people and companies take the shortcut of equating the two. People often engage more with things they actually don't like, and which create negative feelings. These users might score h…

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Curious about this. Don't have an angle, just trying to survey your perspective.

You shared: > People often engage more with things they actually don't like, and which create negative feelings.

Do you think this is innate or learned? And, in either case, can it be unlearned.

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#73

Post by quirkot »

kypro wrote: post #49
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."

The uncomfortable truth to most "the algorithm is biased" takes is that we humans are far more politically biased than the algorithms and we're probably 90% to blame. I'm not saying there is no algorithmic bias, and I tend to agree the X algorithm has a slight conservative bias, but for the most part the owners of these sites care more about keeping your attention than trying to get you to vote a certain way. Therefo…

the issue brought up in the article isn't that "the algorithm is biased" but that "the algorithm causes bias". A feed could perfectly alternate between position A and position B and show no bias at all, but still select more incendiary content on topic A and drive bias towards or away from it.

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#74

Post by quirkot »

dagelf wrote: post #61
arwhatever wrote: post #4

I deleted my account after many years when X recently made the Chronological Feed setting ephemeral, defaulting back to the Algorithmic Feed each time the page is refreshed. No away I'm going to let that level of outrage-baiting garbage even so much as flash before my eyes.

Train it: I just have to spend 3 minutes every other year to tap the 3 dots on every post and choose "Not Interested", for an epic feed unmatched anywhere.

Train the algorithm so that you can be the sort of product you want to see in the world

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#75

Post by mikepurvis »

tarxvf wrote: post #62
bee_rider wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d hope people wouldn’t intentionally pick the political extremism feed if they had any other option (although it’s hard to say).

From where I'm sitting, it seems obvious people do exactly that.

"It's the most interesting one!"

For a related example I was talking with a colleague recently about how we had both (independently) purchased Nebula subscriptions in an effort to avoid getting YouTube premium and giving Google more money, but both felt the pull back to YouTube because it is so good at leveraging years of subscription and watch history to populate the landing page with content we find engaging.

If even two relatively thoughtful individuals choosing to spend money on a platform with the kind of content they'd like to choose to watch can't seem to succeed at beating an engagement-first algorithm, I'm not sure how much hope normies would have, unless it's the real issue is just being terminally online period, and the only way to win is simply not to play.

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#76

Post by PaulHoule »

jmugan wrote: post #63
PaulHoule wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been pretty consistent about telling Bluesky I want to see less of anything political and also disciplined about not following anybody who talks about Trump or gender or how anybody else is causing their problems. I see very little trash.

Maybe it has gotten better recently. I tried and tried with Bluesky, but it would not abide.

It was bad the week Trump got elected, it’s gotten better since then.

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#78

Post by yndoendo »

spankalee wrote: post #45
Herring wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the idea that if you don't support white supremacy you should get off the site owned and run by a clear white supremacist applies regardless of how elections go.

I recommend _Culture in Nazi Germany_ by Michael H Kater. [0] It is very dry but goes into detail of the culture of the era from late 1920s to end of WWII.

One aspect he highlights at the end is that Fascism was not rejected by the current and former citizens, those that migrated, of Germany. In their mind it was incorrectly implemented. A number of Zionist that migrated from Germany to Palestine were supporters of Fascism. It was not until mid to late 1960s when people start realize and admitted Fascism was bad.

I personally will never fund Elon Musk. Anyone that says empathy is bad is a bad person at heart. Empathy is intelligence and those that lack it lack strong intelligence. There is no way to put yourself in the position others have gone through without empathy.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/128/3/1512/728...

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#79

Post by stetrain »

cyrusradfar wrote: post #72
stetrain wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it the algorithm or is it the preference of the Users which is the problem. I'd argue the latter. > Algorithms serve what Users engage with User engagement isn't actually the same thing as user preference, even though I think many people and companies take the shortcut of equating the two. People often engage more with things they actually don't like, and which create negative feelings. These users might score h…

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Curious about this. Don't have an angle, just trying to survey your perspective. You shared: > People often engage more with things they actually don't like, and which create negative feelings. Do you think this is innate or learned? And, in either case, can it be unlearned.

I think it’s situational.

If you measure which TV shows and movies I watch, that’s a vote of preference.

If you measure which news headlines evoke a comment from me, that’s a measure of engagement but not necessarily preference.

People respond to a lot of things that annoy them, and I think it’s a pretty common human trait. Advertising your business with bright lights and noise can be effective, but we often ban this in our towns and cities because we prefer life without them.

Re: The political effects of X's feed algorithm

#80

Post by timbit42 »

apparent wrote: post #46

What does it mean to have someone on a chronological feed, versus the algorithmic one? Does that mean a chronological feed of the accounts they follow? I hardly ever use that, since I don't follow many people, and some people I follow post about lots of stuff I don't care about from the study: > We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks

I don't follow people who post about lots of stuff I don't care about. I follow hashtags instead, which gives me a much higher signal to noise ratio than following those people.
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