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| Twitter finds its algorithm biased in favor of conservative views |
Twitter revealed that its algorithm promotes more content on the right than on the left. But the reason is not clear. The results come from internal research on the computational reinforcement of political content.
During the research period, the company searched for millions of tweets posted between April 1 and August 15, 2020.
These tweets came from media and elected officials in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In all of the countries studied, with the exception of Germany, the company found that right-wing reporting was more expanded than left-wing political reporting. I have also found that right-wing content in the news media also benefits from the same bias.
The company said it was not sure why the data showed that its algorithm favored the right content, stressing that this question was difficult to answer because it was the product of interaction between people and the platform.
However, this cannot be a problem with the algorithm. Steve Rathjee, who studies social media, published his findings and explained how divisive content can spread among foreign political groups.
“We are also very interested in researching the types of content amplified by social media and finding consistent trends,” Rathjee said. Negative posts about foreign political groups tend to attract more attention on Facebook and Twitter.
In other words, if Democrats have negative attitudes toward Republicans (and vice versa), this type of content will typically get more engagement.
Twitter: Rights content gets charged more
If you look at Rathjee's research, it means that right-wing posts on Twitter will provoke and intensify outrage.
Perhaps the problem with Twitter's algorithm has more to do with promoting harmful tweets than with specific political biases. The company's research shows that Germany is the only country where there are no deviations in the correct algorithm.
This could be linked to Germany's deal with Facebook, Twitter and Google to suppress hate speech within 24 hours. Some users even switched their country to Germany via the platform to prevent Nazi images from appearing.
For a while, the platform has been trying to change the way you tweet. In 2020, it started testing a feature that would warn users when they were about to post a rude response. That year, I also started experiencing the messages that pop up when you thought you were in a bitter platform battle.