Elon Musk wasn't stupid to buy Twitter
New research shows that the X algorithm pushes people to the political right
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Do you remember how back when Elon Musk bought Twitter there was this big rush to say how stupid the decision was? That it made no business sense? I'm almost nostalgic for that moment: ah, the good old days when we could maybe still believe think Elon was a businessman and not a wannabe horseman of the apocalypse.
Buying Twitter wasn't stupid, because it wasn't a business decision. It was a political one. And a study published last week in Nature shows exactly what kind of political dividend X is reaping: the X algorithmic feed drives users to the right.
What's new
Researchers found that users switched from chronological to algorithmic X feeds got more conservative and more hooked on the platform. Users who switched feeds became more likely to approve of Republican policy priorities[1], oppose investigations of Trump[2], have warm feelings about the Kremlin[3], follow more conservative and political activist accounts[4], and just generally be more MAGA-aligned.[5]
Switching people from algorithmic feeds to chronological feeds did nothing except reduce their X engagement.
Who did it
The study comes from a team of four European political economists: Germain Gauthier, Roland Hodler, Philine Widmer and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya. None declared conflicts of interest that would indicate a relationship to a social media company, and they did not need to get any cooperation from X to run the study.
How they did it
The team took advantage of a 2023 X feature that let users select either a chronological or algorithmic feed to run two experiments: switching the algorithmic feed on and switching it off.
They recruited several thousand US-based X users and randomly assigned them to algorithmic or chronological feeds. The participants were surveyed before and after the experiments, which lasted between a day and several weeks. A fraction of the participants also allowed the team to install Chrome extensions that tracked additional data from their X accounts and feeds.
Why it matters
Despite a growing consensus that algorithms and bots can manipulate our opinions, scientists had not yet found political effects from social feed algorithms before. Notably, a big study of Facebook and Instagram (done in cooperation with Meta) reported no political effects of switching between algorithmic and chronological feeds.
But previous studies looked at what happened when users were switched from an algorithmic feed to a chronological feed (and involved social media companies). In this study, they did the opposite: instead of switching the algorithm off, they switched it on and found that the algorithmic X feed does in fact influence users' politics — and that the effects endure even after the feed is switched back to chronological, which explains why turning the feed off had no effect tin the Meta study.
What I think about it
I think this study is a big deal because it 1) wasn't done in collaboration with a social media company and 2) was actually able to test an intervention to look for cause rather than mere correlation.
We should take results like this seriously. For most of our evolutionary history, the only way we could determine what's real was to see if other people acted like they were living in the same reality. We evaluate what's true based on what we see in our local social networks. But that makes us vulnerable, because we'll never see the whole network; only a little local sample of it. Algorithms and bots have influence beyond traditional media because they directly manipulate our experiences of local social networks, and therefore our sense of what's normal — and what's real.
Look. You and I both know that if I were a barista, you'd 100% be leaving a tip right now. The social pressure to drop a coin in that jar would just be overwhelming. But you're presumably reading this thing alone on a universe-rectangle, so I can't rely on my mere presence to remind you to be nice.
If you made it this far I assume you're enjoying the article. So maybe drop a coin in my digital tip jar. It's just €2 per month (€0.50 per post!) — a cheap and fully automated weekly warm fuzzy feeling for the digital age.
Footnotes
[1]: More likely to value Republican policy priorities: 0.11 s.d (95% CI: 0.02, 0.20; P = 0.016)
[2]: More likely to oppose investigations of Trump: 0.08 s.d (95% CI: 0.01, 0.16; P = 0.026)
[3]: More likely to have pro-Kremlin views: 0.12 s.d. (95% CI: 0.03, 0.21; P = 0.007)
[4]: More likely to follow conservative accounts: 0.17 s.d. (95% CI: 0.03, 0.31; P = 0.015); More likely to follow political activists: 0.13 s.d. (95% CI: 0.01, 0.25; P = 0.036); More likely to follow conservative political activists:0.18 s.d. (95% CI: 0.05, 0.32; P = 0.010)
[5]: More likely to align with coservative points overall: 0.12 s.d. (95% CI: 0.04, 0.21; P = 0.004).
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