X is amplifying far-right accounts
avclub.com
avclub.com
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.
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.
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’)
When Trump was on Twitter, he blocked some accounts.
I will add though that me as a private citizen (if I was stupid enough to be on social media (used to be long time ago)) I would block 100’s of accounts daily. However, if I was POTUS I would never block unless I am sure it is a bot and not a real person. If you are POTUS and also have nothing better to do (God help us) but read replies and mentions on social media I’d like to hear “both sides.”
Republicans in particular are awesome at winning elections where majority of sheep voting eat crap like “wokeness” all day long. however, the Replicans neither know nor probably want to govern (especially this administration which is acting like 95% of americans voted for them) and hence come 2026 and 2028 they get creamed like 2018 and 2020. average american voter is fairly dumb (see 2016 and 2024) as it is easy to scare people with stupid things like “wokeness” and “migrant crime” - works well to win election but when you are clueless how to govern you soon (2026 for DJT) become lame duck waisting country’s time for next two years.
Now the tech titans are leaning the other way, it seems. They look to be pretty flexible in their politics.
Even when Obama was president and had both houses of congress, I don’t recall headlines about ‘far left’ stuff.
If you think that’s wrong, show some links.
You mean the same Obama whose signature legislative accomplishment was passing a healthcare reform law modeled on a proposal originally made by the insurance industry and embraced by the Republican Party as an alternative to the proposed Clinton healthcare reform?
Yeah, there's a reason that there wasn't much talk about the "far left" except from very openly right-wing partisan sources.
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.
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.
WTF.
[0] https://news.sky.com/story/how-sky-news-investigated-xs-algo...
>"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"
I don't find any mention of how/if they separated the accounts by using different IPs/types of internet connection - seems like a bit of an omission.
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)