TikTok's algorithm exhibited pro-Republican bias during 2024 presidential race
100 comments
·February 4, 2025AnEro
mezzie2
I'd be inclined to think it's because trans people are more likely to engage with anti-trans posts.
I'm a cis lesbian and I only get pro-trans content, BUT I do get a lot of 'random bisexuals shitting on lesbians' content.
I've also noticed that when I scroll away from political posts from the left, it almost immediately tries to give me political posts from the right. The algorithm doesn't seem to pick up that my main concern with political content is whether or not it's FUNNY. The only political content I want to see on TikTok is shitposts, but the algo seems to operate under a pretty basic 'If scroll past left/right, then show right/left'.
AnEro
I think if the algo showed alot of ED triggering content to ED survivors as well then I'd be more likely to agree thats the primary driver and not just an influence.
I'm not sure but anti-trans content/socializing in general is primarily a driver for poor mental health with trans people. Not engaging and blocking a lot of the content is day 1 advice in the community. Also, a lot of anti-trans content is targeting non-passing trans people, which is often full of ways to trigger ones dysphoria and dysmorphia. Like there are keyboard warriors for sure but i don't know anyone that intentionally watches that stuff and most even avoid tiktok entirely because of it
And I'm skeptical it even identifies me as trans if i'm just watching a few trans people that aren't talking about trans issues or experiences really. Where i scroll past much more xyz issue that affects females in particular, when it's trying to diagnosis me (which i think is cause of my health/nutrition interest it trys to convince me xyz is cause i'm not balancing my hormones or its pocs or assumes my period is terrible lol)
normalaccess
Yeah, I doubt that there are enough tags or categories for the algorithm to use.
Big brush, broad strokes.
nemomarx
the community doesn't help by trying to dunk on the anti trans stuff a little too much but I do assume it's engagement bait
AnEro
I'd say with the reverse being very true as well would largely just make it so once you get anything close to touching the topic it tosses out which ever side they think you'll engage with the most.
For more anecdotal context, my other interests lean into a demographic/stereotype of an upper middle class pilates/health/cleangirl girliepop. Which from my experience they centrist/ambivalent maybe skew left but not inherently pro trans.
mezzie2
> For more anecdotal context, my other interests lean into a demographic/stereotype of an upper middle class pilates/health/cleangirl girliepop. Which from my experience they centrist/ambivalent maybe skew left but not inherently pro trans.
I'm not sure this is accurate, speaking as someone whose social circle has a lot of people in that group and who also sometimes ends up on that side of the algo. For various reasons, it's only socially acceptable to be outspokenly on the left in that group (more so for women over the age of 25/30), but there's a sizable minority who either disagree with certain topics or are more aligned with the right, but they aren't going to jeopardize their social circles or (particularly in the case of content creators) their audience.
It's the girl version of the men who put 'apolitical' on dating apps to hide being a conservative because they don't want to limit their dating prospects.
ThePowerOfFuet
> I've never gotten a platform that doesn't show me the trans negative politics in my feeds after engaging with trans creators.
How about Mastodon or Bluesky?
AnEro
Haven't tried, I got off twitter and insta 2 years ago. I've been meaning to try it but its often hard to build up a feed again on one of those platforms it often just feels empty or if you don't follow the right people cluttered.
Der_Einzige
Anti-trans bias is often just lookism, since many conservatives who purport to hate trans people are more than happy to engage with those who "pass".
Consider 4chans fascination and fetishization of "femboys" and even this whole hilarious "saga": https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/favela-trans-girl-saga
This is the same "conservative gen Z" group that somehow helps get trump elected with the Q shit...
Many of them just hate non-passing trans people. Sad but true, and a lot of trans people also dislike other non passing trans people.
AnEro
100% I started not passing then lost a ton of weight and found out I have alot of traditionally feminine interests. I went from being spat at in the street and almost attacked with no help, to people going out of their way to protect me from creepy men following me.
From my experience passing, how attractive you are, and your interests/hobbies are all attached to how well you a treated in the world right now.
Trans people call it passing privilege for a reason.
azinman2
> From my experience passing, how attractive you are, and your interests/hobbies are all attached to how well you a treated in the world right now.
That's always been true for anyone in just about any context.
xiii1408
It's another sock puppet study: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17831
Very similar methodology to an earlier study the government cited in their case against TikTok: https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-...
There are a number of issues with these studies, one being that the way the sock puppet bots interact with content is not exactly organic. Typically they search for content in a conditioning phase, followed by random scrolling during which the recommended videos are collected and classified by an LLM. Modern recommendation algorithms famously work by examining how long and how users engage with content, and there's none of that going on here. Still, the methodology itself and the use of LLMs to classify content is clever and probably about the best we can get.
Also, even if there _is_ a bias, it doesn't tell us why. Are the recommendations intentionally spiked, or is this simply the recommendation strategy that maximizes profit? (Or that the recommendation model thinks will maximize profit?) It's very difficult to tell, which is part of what makes these models dangerous and also part of what makes them difficult to regulate.
On a sidenote, TikTok (and presumably other content platforms) _really_ does not like these studies, as demonstrated by them nerfing search functionality after the second study above was released to prevent researchers using these techniques in the future. I haven't read the study in detail yet, but it will be interesting to see how the team at NYU Abu Dhabi adapted their methodology.
ziddoap
While I am skeptical of what reasonable conclusions can be drawn from a study like this, they explain the methodology in the article. You said:
>Typically [...] followed by random scrolling during which the recommended videos are collected and classified [...] Modern recommendation algorithms famously work by examining how long and how users engage with content, and there's none of that going on here.
But they claim that videos are watched, not just collected from the recommendation page.
"The accounts watched 10 videos, followed by a one-hour pause, and repeated this process for six days"
xiii1408
Perhaps I should have been more clear. It's TikTok, so of course the only way to collect recommendations is to watch videos. Some studies watch the whole video, some just watch part of it, but it's TikTok, so fundamentally you're watching a video.
ziddoap
I might just not be reading it properly. I've never used TikTok, I assumed by your description that they scraped video titles/transcripts/etc. from the recommendation page without any engagement on the video. (I suppose I should read the study you linked!)
When you say "how users engage with content, and there's none of that going on here", by "none of that", do you just mean likes/comments, that sort of thing?
I would usually consider watching as engaging with content, but if you mean additional engagement (as I would call it, anyways), that would make a lot more sense to me.
null
threeseed
> Also, even if there _is_ a bias, it doesn't tell us why
Because that is a political discussion that will inevitably derail the point.
If there is identified bias then the platform must address it. Or it should be labelled a national security threat.
xiii1408
I think this is a valid point and a really interesting question. If that's the standard, we need to regulate all recommendation algorithms. (i.e. put limits on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube as well.)
How could we regulate this? I can think of two ways:
- Results-based enforcement. i.e., companies are free to use whatever recommendation model they like, but have to recommend content within ideological bounds. i.e., you can't bias toward one partisanship more than X%. There's some precedent for this with the equal-time rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule) and FCC fairness doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine).
- Algorithm-based enforcement. i.e., there are limits on the algorithm itself. Perhaps you have to present your algorithm to a government agency and provide a proof that it obeys certain properties. But the enforcement here is analytical rather than empirical.
normalaccess
The problem is that the algorithms are programed to show people what they want to see OR what the platform want's you to see.
If it's orgasmic then this is no different than any other form of organic popularity. Seeing as Trump won the popular vote and the electoral collage, people were interested in republican content. On the same token it's very easy to AstroTurf and claim it was organic. From my personal conversations in meat-space I lean organic.
Is there funny business going on? Absolutely, all the time everywhere in every way. Can we say this was funny business? Not without the code.
TLDR: Popularity algorithms push popular content algorithmically.
duke_sam
Not that I think TikTok is particularly spotless but this sounds like the result of an algorithm learning what groups will engage with, ie democratic leaning accounts were more likely to do _something_ with republican content than vice versa.
notahacker
Yeah. I remember Facebook used to appear to show me more of certain stuff that annoyed me (not political stuff so much as scammy stuff) because I hovered or even reported it. The most naive and high-level keyword based association is going to link both pro and anti trans stuff as the same general category too (another Facebook thing was the massive overlap between history and really dumb "alternative history")
guerrilla
This is interesting but I still think we have some responsibility here. What if most people hold some view in a low-grade kind of way but algorithms like this could accidentally (or intentionally) amplify it to the point of genocide. The story of Rwanda is well known and we can imagine it being much worse if we're not careful with this kind of technology.
plorg
The title here is deceptive and I'm not sure the study authors did a good job of characterizing their results. They found that Democrats were likely to see less Democrat-aligned content than Republicans were to see Republican-aligned content. But Republican-aligned as a category included both pro-Republican and anti-Democrat content and the big difference was that Democrats saw less anti-Republican and more anti-Democrat videos. Which may seem like a conspiracy until you imagine the amount of anti-Harris/"uncommitted" content that was on TikTok during the election cycle. Even if you think that have an edge to the a Republican ticket I don't think you could reasonably describe a video by a DSA guy decrying the bombing of Gaza as a pro-Republican video.
Perhaps more succinctly, there was more anti-Democrat material from both sides (and the binary clarification system is reductive in a way that obscures what's going on)
ahs1
what about the other apps?
tzs
Twitter before Musk had a bias toward promoting conservatives [1].
[1] https://cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/blog-twitter...
jsheard
Well X has a pretty clear slant as of late. I've tried making a fresh burner account a few times to see what the default algorithm is like and surprise, it's dominated by Elon Musk himself, his fanboys/orbiters, and political content which strongly aligns with his views.
Even when dissenting political content slips into the feed it's usually still about Elon Musk, the algorithm surfaces more mentions of him than the actual president.
erentz
Benn Jordan did a good video that covered the bots and bias on X recently. Don't know if it or the papers were submitted here before (anyone feel free to submit it not):
api
What was formerly Twitter is now some guy's private web site, just a guy with a whole lot of money.
bigfishrunning
It was before too, but it was a different guy
pizza
Same. Made a burner account, follow nothing and nobody, tweet nothing, like nothing, days later I check in on it and I have like a dozen notifications of tweets from the likes of Alex Jones and Donald Trump Jr.
redleggedfrog
Stupid things for stupid people, no mystery.
pizza
There's a public relations firm somewhere out there that really hit the ball out of the park for you to have this knee-jerk reaction, don't you think?
hassleblad23
Everyone gets a vote.
draw_down
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mcosta
Does this means republicans did better propaganda than democrats?
carlosdp
That's not algorithmic bias, that's a large delta in content quality.
Videos coming out of the Harris camps were milquetoast in comparison to the Trump camp. Of course those videos get more attention, from people that like him and hate him, and therefore get pushed more by the algorithm.
ziddoap
>Of course those videos get more attention [...] and therefore get pushed more by the algorithm.
From the article:
"These differences were consistent across all three states and could not be explained by differences in engagement metrics like likes, views, shares, comments, or followers."
HumblyTossed
I don't know how to ask this without striking ire, but how much of this was simply due to Trump's ... um... personality?
gmd63
The main use case of technology and AI is to sway public opinion. Elon Musk is one of the richest men in the world and that's where he spends most of his focus. If you're building technology, know that this is the endgame, and proceed with caution.
The amount of deceit per dollar you can generate today is profoundly inexpensive when compared to the entirety of human history. Sadly, our cowardly tech giants are the antithesis of the morals espoused in comic books they grew up on, seeking to abdicate all responsibility as they achieve unprecedented power.
skywhopper
That was certainly my experience with it. Overwhelmingly so, even. Not just “Republican” per se, but all sorts of reality-denying nonsense, propaganda, and clearly foreign-influenced trolling. Depressing enough that I removed the app that I once loved to use.
spinach
And many platforms had a pro-Democrat lean, especially in the 2020 election. Blaming tiktok seems like scapegoating instead of looking introspectively at the Dem's failings like having a weak leader and pushing various insane ideologies.
kenjackson
What insane ideologies do Dems push? That seems like a weird characterization of either party, although fits Trump specifically -- and I think a lot of Republicans are actually afraid of him.
eagleinparadise
As a center-lefty I cannot believe people are so silly to not be capable of self-reflecting the left's massive blunders.
Do you not remember "DEFUND THE POLICE!"? That is actually insane policy that the entire party got taken over and was forced to follow along with... even Kamala got slammed for it in the 2024 election! One of many things.
So yes, Trump and the far-right have some off-the-wall crazy stuff, but the left does too. Remember your bias. What seems crazy (i.e. abortion restrictions) does not seem crazy to an entire other segment of the country that you don't share the same exact values to.
And your values and things you don't consider crazy may be considered insane by others.
kenjackson
First, if you read my comment, I said "either party". I actually don't find almost anything pushed from Reps/Dems party as insane (specific politicians I do find genuinely insane though). I think they're almost all somewhat rational, even "defund the police". "Defund the police" has bad marketing, but to this day it still makes sense to not overfund police to do things they aren't well suited to do. This is something Musk would probably even agree with, if not for the marketing.
BryantD
I don't recall the entire Democratic Party getting taken over, no. I recall Biden saying things like "No, I don‘t support defunding the police." I remember Biden's 2022 crime prevention plan which called for $13 billion to hire 100,000 police officers around the country over a five year period.
likeabatterycar
If you are incapable of identifying some of the insane positions that clearly lost them the 2024 election, I'm afraid you may be in a bubble and no amount of someone explaining it is going to help.
ziddoap
Or, consider that "insane" is a word that's excessive for pretty much every position of every candidate of every party, primarily used to generate immediate emotional responses and shutting down conversation.
There are positions which I think are dumb, or potentially harmful, or counter to what I believe, etc. But there's rarely been a position I consider "insane" (from all parties!).
If you're immediately jumping to calling every position you disagree with "insane", you're just being hyperbolic.
ikety
People can't make up their minds, did dems push insane ideology or did they fail to stray far enough from the status quo?
I'd argue they ran one of the least controversial campaigns in comparison to the current global political climate. I think those in disagreement were successfully convinced by the opposing party.
Trump's first few weeks makes it clear he was the big mover and shaker.
twiclo
I can make up my mind. They pushed insane ideologies. At the convention the other day not a single nominee said, "Maybe we shouldn't fund sex changes for illegal immigrant prisoners." In fact they supported it.
TaurenHunter
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black6
That biological sex is a social construct, for one, and elementary school children need to learn about it.
ikety
When did you see Harris push that in her campaign? Her campaign was extremely basic and as uncontroversial as possible (to the detriment of the dems in my opinion)
kenjackson
I've always heard the opposite. That biological sex is biological. Gender is socially constructed. That's the standard progressive position, although I'm sure you can find someone that says otherwise, or in casual usage conflates sex and gender.
llamaimperative
No one said biological sex is a social construct.
Weird to say but could be a relevant anecdote, as a trans person, that avoids politics in my socials but watches trans creators. I've never gotten a platform that doesn't show me the trans negative politics in my feeds after engaging with trans creators. I find I only get the positive politics AFTER I ignore or dislike the negatives ones.