Hacker News Reader

Comment by colpabar | Hacker News Reader

The last time I tried creating a twitter account, I was immediately presented with a set of recommended people to follow, which included Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. I'm sure there were more, but those were the first three it showed me, and I did not bother to look at any more.

I don't want to follow any politicians, but that seems pretty obviously one sided. I wish people would just recognize that, and recognize that it isn't "right-wing" to do so.

It twitter recommended new users to follow Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, and those were the only recommendations they saw without clicking "view more", would anyone question whether that was biased or not?

View on HN

OK, so the recommendation engine is liberal?

I don't know how the recommendation engine works, but Barack Obama is the most followed account on twitter I think, so can see how they'd suggest that...

But if the recommendation engine is anything like their recommended tweets, I think they intentionally show you the other side always. I see tons of garbage view points that I don't agree with almost exclusively when I view a tweet. Without knowing anything about your tracking cookies and however else they 'enrich' what they know about you, it's tough to say why you got the recommendations you did. If you signed up based on a tweet from a democrat so you could engage by telling them they're wrong, maybe they assumed you like other democrats.

If your complaint is that Twitter is an outrage inducing platform by design, I would absolutely agree. But that isn't an ideological bent. It just wants you to engage, and the fastest and easiest method is to make you mad.

Is it so hard to believe that the recommendation engine is liberal? It’s true of HN too.

It’s not a bad thing, the same way that Fox News being conservative isn’t a bad thing. It just is what it is.

These are major news sites. News always has a bias. It’s important to identify, for one’s own sake.

It’s not even particularly hard to bias an AI algorithm. It’s arguably the default.

Not hard to believe - younger people make up the bulk of their audience, and probably the bulk of HN that trend more liberal. That's a reflection of the userbase though, not necessarily of Twitter or HN's views. I would bet most LPs are more conservative - if only in private.

"I see tons of garbage view points that I don't agree with almost exclusively when I view a tweet."

Perhaps because you're on the fringe.

Nope, I am very much not - but I believe the twitter algo biases opposing viewpoints on popular tweets. Go look a tweet from AOC, and then from Ted - the replies I see are almost all opposing views, not the most popular replies or anything similar. You have to scroll a bit to find the sycophants.

>If your complaint is that Twitter is an outrage inducing platform by design, I would absolutely agree. But that isn't an ideological bent. It just wants you to engage, and the fastest and easiest method is to make you mad.

I don't think we can say with any honesty that Twitter is a clone of Fox's Three talking heads, comprised of a good looking moderator with a leftwinger, and a rightwinger duking it out.

Twitter has been censoring, moderating, editorializing, and shadow-banning a large amount of conservatives, Libertarians, and also, moderates/centrists, and leftwingers that are posting contrary to the establishment narratives.

By turning into more of an ideological echo-chamber it initiated the birth of conservative and other competitors, of which gettr appears to be leading the race with competitors like parler, truthsocial, gab, and others falling behind. Am surprised there are not shareholder lawsuits yet against Twitter's Officers for violating fiduciary responsibilities.

Maybe they are prioritizing influence over eyeballs & economics?

I'd question the intelligence of anyone or anything who recommended following the musings of Ted Cruz. And that's coming from someone who grew up in a family deeply engaged in county-level republican politics.

If it were 2009, and Twitter was pushing Al Gore and ignoring George Bush, I'd see it differently. But it's 2022, and the toxic & polarizing aspects of many individuals make a perceived endorsement problematic for mainstream consumers.

I get tons of recommendations for right wing politicians on my country. Trying to make sense of the recommendations is trying to extract meaning from a novel written by a monkey. It's a waste of time. Just block that section with your favorite ad blocker and live happily thereafter.

It's not propoganda if it affirms your worldview.

presumably this recommendation is based on who most other people follow. That's a systemic effect.

Not with the French liberals, they are really not popular, but still they are suggested for no reason.

they are really not popular in France, or on twitter? Presumably, twitter promotes content that's popular on twitter, and twitter skews liberal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com