X is amplifying far-right accounts

https://www.avclub.com/twitter-x-amplifying-right-wing-accounts

by saubeidl • 9 months ago

46 41 9 months ago

avclub.com

hoppp• 9 months ago

I think that's by design. Twitter has became a far-right platform since Musk took over and renamed it to X

spwa44• 9 months ago

This is seen on most other platforms as well. Facebook, instagram and perhaps most worryingly tiktok.

xnx• 9 months ago

TikTok is far right? I know the fyp is very personalized, but I can't think of a single far right video I've seen. Occasionally I'll see comments on videos from people who don't like wind turbines, but that's about it.

api3• 9 months ago

How much is intentional and how much is from the fact that far right content tends to be aimed at the amygdala? It’s usually crafted to inspire either outrage or fear. Those emotions have also been shown to maximize attention, and attention is what the algorithm seeks.

It also tends to be polarizing. If you react with disgust because you disagree, the algorithm also picks that up as engagement.

I do see more far right content on algorithmic social media and I’ve always suspected this is why. When I see lefty content it’s almost always when it’s of a similar form: outrage or fear bait.

I rarely see any form of political content on those platforms that is thoughtful or positive, because that doesn’t maximize engagement.

Of course I rarely look at any of those hellscapes anymore. All algorithmic social media is a worthless addictive attention trap.

api3• 9 months ago

I was on it before then and it was overflowing with far right content then too. Not saying Musk hasn’t amplified that, but it’s always been full of it.

IMHO the format is intrinsically biased toward shallow ideas that elicit an emotional reaction, and far right content is well suited. Like I said in another reply when I see lefty content it’s the same style. You almost never see deep ideas of substance on there because they don’t fit the medium.

The Twitter style medium is inherently toxic, at least when used for anything but a human pub-sub bus to notify people of things. For discourse it selects only for the lowest most inflammatory kind.

The same is true of Twitter’s imitators. The format is irredeemable.

acdha• 9 months ago

I’d also add that there’s a lot of money in producing astro-turf content. All of those “influencers” effectively auditioning to see if they can go viral enough for one of the right-wing outfits to hire them, the bot farms promoting certain stories, etc. exist to employ voices and make it seem like their ideas are closer to evenly shared. There aren’t left-wing billionaires funding that so the same kind of network doesn’t exist.

LocalH• 9 months ago

In other words, the format is intrinsically biased towards engagement of any type. Trolls get engagement.

Havoc• 9 months ago

And here I thought the home of mecha hitler would be neutral ground /s

NotGMan• 9 months ago

Obviously when Twitter was far left and full or censorship of the right such articles were not written.

SirFatty• 9 months ago

Sure..

saubeidl5• 9 months ago

When was Twitter ever far-left? I don't recall a time when it was calling for public ownership of the means of production, overthrowing capitalism, working class uprisings or any other far-left platform...

spwa44• 9 months ago

Ever notice how people refuse to accept that their view on politics has a leaning? That a leftists' idea of what constitutes far left might require tankies (ie. accounts that advocate violent imposition of communism/socialism by an external force like Russia or terrorism), whereas for rightist far left might mean as little as limits on enforcement of immigration rules.

Just yesterday there was news about a protest in a cinema in Paris, where the police essentially invaded, and yes, beat people attempting to stop them into the hospital, and arrested "the core" of the protest. The police's story is that a small group tried to set the cinema on fire (very French of them, I must say, what's a protest without something on fire?), which is kind of confirmed by them arresting like 0.1% of the protestors, showing torches they found on the protestors, a big scorch mark on the floor, plus they let the protest continue. Of course, on the internet the only intention of the police using, granted, a LOT of force (as soon as they saw the torch, according to the police statement), preventing protestors from setting an old wooden Parisian building with more than 1000 people inside on fire was to protect Israeli aggression/colonialism (there was an Israeli concert happening) ... For now the newspapers and TV are a bit more on the sane side, but every year that passes more and more newspapers are joining the lunatics on the left or right (and truth be told, mostly on the left)

xigoi• 8 months ago

Calls for the abolition of police were pretty common on old Twitter.

techblueberry• 9 months ago

“Obviously”

twatter• 9 months ago

I would be interested to see the methodology and the raw data for this analysis. Most importantly, how are they defining "far-right" and "extreme"?

saubeidl5• 9 months ago

Sky News has a very well-made site going into more detail on methodology etc: https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boo...

RickJWagner3• 9 months ago

I was just wondering why it seems we see headlines about ‘far right’ issues, but seldom see headlines about ‘far left’ things.

If there is a political center, shouldn’t the headlines carry a similar number of headlines ( at least over time? I can understand that at times one side or the other might be more news worthy, but honestly I just don’t remember a time where headlines discussed someone being ‘far left’)

saubeidl5• 9 months ago

It's because the far-right is in power all over the world, while I can't really think of a single far-left government anywhere. It's just not as big of an issue.

bdangubic5• 9 months ago

yea feels like media should do both so for every “far-right” story which are happening pretty much hourly the media should make up a “far-left” story to counter it, it is only fair :)

smitty1e• 9 months ago

The center is those getting flamed evenly from the 'left' and 'right'.

archagon• 9 months ago

We do not have a “far left” political bloc in this country.

tzs• 9 months ago

That's because there isn't a significant "far left" in the US. Democrats today are not too far from where they were in the 2000s.

Republicans on the other hand are way farther right than they were then. For a good illustration go read Republican Party Platforms from then.

The 2008 Platform for instance talked about the need to greatly reduce the use of fossil fuels to reduce climate change, and called for the government to push for electric and alternate fuel cars and for making gas cars more efficient, and for pushing for renewable energy.

dragonwriter2• 9 months ago

but seldom see headlines about ‘far left’ things.

Because we have far right domination of the party currently enjoying a trifecta in the federal government, while the far left in the US is split between a tiny minority of the opposition party and various politically-irrelevant minor parties.

Before its recent sharp right turn, it was widely argued that the US was a "center-right" country; it is now, by government if not necessarily popular sentiment, a far right one.

itsoktocry2• 9 months ago

They created 9 accounts for the study, and had "experts" qualify content as left or right wing. They could have at least tried before publishing this story for the 100th time.

crtasm2• 9 months ago

Sky News collaborated with digital consultancy firm 411 to train a Large Language Model - an AI tool - to categorise the content into political and apolitical categories. The definitions for those categories were created in consultation with multiple computer science academics and social media experts. The 5,981 accounts we categorised accounted for 67% of all of the posts in our dataset. See our full methodology here[0].

[0] https://news.sky.com/story/how-sky-news-investigated-xs-algo...

itsoktocry2• 9 months ago

From the article:

"Specifically, the Sky News team ran a study where they created nine new Twitter/X accounts, three left-wing, three right-wing, and three politically neutral, and then tracked what content got dumped into their “For You” tabs on the Elon Musk-owned social media service during a one-month period in 2025"

spwa44• 9 months ago

If you think this is bad, register a fresh tiktok account, especially if you're from Europe and know for example what French or German extreme-right content looks like.

WTF.

X is amplifying far-right accounts

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