X's algorithm feeds off ragebait and impacts Democrats more, study finds

rhabarba

If only there were more than two possible political opinions on the internet.

nikole9696

I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case for most social media apps. They're going for engagement since that's what makes the money for them, as the article mentions. I would be curious to see if this kind of study could be done for other platforms and if it would yield similar results. I'd also be curious if it applied to things that are not overtly political, such as animal activism, vegetarianism, and other polarizing opinions.

Sohcahtoa82

> The paper, titled Value misalignment of X’s feed algorithm is a reflection of value tensions in engagement, found that the site’s algorithm prioritized engagement above all else when it generated a user’s For You Page Are people genuinely surprised by this? I thought this was widely known. Engagement is engagement, and you will be shown content you engage with. If someone posts something you don't like, and you reply with an angry comment, that's engagement and you'll be shown more similar content . The algorithm does not care if your engagement is negative. You still engaged and that's all that matters. We used to say "Don't feed the trolls". These days, people can't help but feed the trolls and then get upset when their feed is full of trolls. > Epstein said he’d need to do more research to find out why X seems to serve ragebait to Democrats more often than Republicans. It could be that there’s more rightwing content on X overall or it could be that Democrats tend to engage with posts they disagree with more often. IMO, the left more often feels the need to have a moral high ground, and so can't help but try to take it at every opportunity. > Nikita Bier — X’s former head of product — confirmed that the site’s algorithm had at one time been set to favor replies. “This is no longer true,” Bier said in a post on X. “The largest contributor of seeing ragebait was the reply predictor and we were aware that angry replies were causing people to see more of that content. So last month, we gave the reply predictor a 15x boost if it’s a friend’s post — and it reduced ragebait by [an] order of magnitude.” Would not surprise me in the least if Musk ordered that change to be reverted in favor of increasing engagement.