Twitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outlets

The reductive conclusion is either "right wing tweets are more engaging" or "the algorithm amplifies right wing tweets." A reduction implies that either the algorithm or users are neutral. Without algorithmic bias, users will amplify both equally. Or conversely, results reflect user bias/preference/behaviour because the software is unbiased.

Like a lot of reductions, these are true but incomplete. We know damn well that software design will affect the popularity of various post types. Most forums have active mitigation strategies to avoid certain types of content from becoming overabundant. HN has the "middlebrow dismissal" rule, for example. We also have no reason to believe that users, on average, are "unbiased" or that any specific outcome represents and unbiased reflection collective user views.

There's no doubt that the character of HN's homepage, or reddit, FB & Twitter reflection of both moderation/software decisions and "organic" user preferences. There's no hard line between them.

OTOH, this doesn't mean "nothing to see here."

This is also not unique to social media. You can clearly see that specific traditional media stations/publications favour specific views. More importantly, they amplify certain stories, cover certain candidates, and have many other preferences and biases that have big political impacts.

Take this example on a recent US bill's media coverage: https://thecolumn.substack.com/p/on-reconciliation-bill-cnn-...

Here, instead of "left vs right," they distinguish between "horse race coverage" and "substance." 91.3% of CNN's coverage was found to be "horse race coverage?" Is that a bias? Pattern? Editorial Decision." Reflection of user interest? It sure does affect politics though. Frames the whole debate.

No one is claiming that there's a piece of code that detects a Twitter user being a right-wing politician and then showing it to more users.

Whether the bias is deliberate or not, it's still a bias. Right wing gets their message amplified more than the left.

Or Twitter's content policies could follow the law and reflect the political leaning of the governement, but then how do you enforce moderation on a free/liberal social network which by definition should be free from governement censorship?

Whether it’s natural or not is irrelevant IMHO.

If a post fanning the flames of a religious war or ethnic cleansing is “organically popular” should the algorithm amplified it?

It should also be noted that just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s a factually correct piece of information or a sensible course of action.

Sometimes lies and bad ideas are more (emotionally) appealing and eye catching but that doesn’t mean one should propagate them.

Reddit and HN are guilty of this too given how their vote based system works.

> If you search for the word “bias” in Twitter’s post you’ll not find support for The Guardian’s editorialization

But if you search for "favour" you'll find "[our findings revealed that] algorithmic amplification favours right-leaning news source". In the abstract. Which means the exact same thing.

> Here’s an important excerpt, which notes that more analysis is needed to understand whether the amplification is unnatural relative to user interactions

The guardian article includes your quote so I don't think you can accuse it of omitting important context.

> Twitter’s internal research is saying that certain tweets are organically more popular and engaging and more likely to be shown

I'm not sure where you're reading this from. It is pretty explicit that further research is required in to the cause of the discrepancy.