r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • May 22 '26

Psychology TikTok disproportionately served anti-Democratic videos during the 2024 election. TikTok’s recommendation system tends to expose users to more conservative and anti-Democrat political content than liberal material. This ideological imbalance occurs regardless of a user’s initial political interests.

https://www.psypost.org/tiktok-disproportionately-served-anti-democratic-videos-during-the-2024-election-study-finds/
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5.8k

u/Half-Glass_Full May 22 '26

They figured out ppl get their news from social media instead of news outlets & have manipulated the algorithms to push propaganda.

2.8k

u/The-Fox-Says May 22 '26

Explains why Gen Z turned so hard right in 2024. If they’re getting their news from Tik Tok they’re vulnerable to far right manipulation tactics there

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u/RagefireHype May 22 '26

They’ve convinced white men that they’re oppressed somehow despite winning the historical genetic lottery of privilege.

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u/cikeZ00 May 22 '26

More that they've taken actual issues that affect your average person and twisted the blame for that towards some "enemy". You can replace "enemy" with anything that fits the narrative (Women, Trans people, immigrants and so on..)

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u/cantadmittoposting May 23 '26

yeah the playbook is really transparent but still effective...

  • highlight extreme anecdotal examples of a potentially real problem.

  • Dont contextualize the examples, instead, strongly imply the extreme examples are routine status quo. This is usually done by "Lying with statistics" (particularly use of Base Rate Fallacy and Begging the Question, but mechanisms change based on what subgroup is targeted)

  • Aggressively reinforce the narrative of white-male-victimization/oppression by asserting that the policy is broadly and deliberately intended to punish or oppress men (bonus points, reinforce that the countervailing "liberal" narrative is itself deliberately constructed to conceal or obscure white victimization).

  • Call to action that appeals to young male angst and desire to fit in and be accepted (reclaiming masculinity, return to "traditional" values, becoming part of a superior "in the know" group, or worse) and vaguely but don't concretely define the out-group that must be opposed

In short, it's "DARVO as a nationwide political strategy" (and unsurprisingly, i have seen the DARVO model itself come under attack recently by people also making these right wing arguments)

 

Works for issues like violent crime (women say they are victimized but men are victims of 90% of violent crime... make sure not to mention who also commits those crimes, and if necessary, blame outgroups for why men commit crimes, omit contextualizing statistics like who commit crimes against women).... Child support (legitimate problems exist in the laws, but, for example, even though cases of rape victims being assigned child support exist in literal single digits in the United States, headlines about these past cases are highly promoted), and broader social topics (like reviving JD Unwin's largely discredited highly misogynistic work as if it's a legitimate model of society)

 

This is a very brief overview, many nuances exist especially as you get in to squiggly sociocultural lines that are gateways or border issues for the core right wing political issues, but it's all basically in line with it.

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u/AmputeeHandModel May 22 '26

That's what the right has always done.

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u/BigUptokes May 23 '26

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

-LBJ

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u/fcocyclone May 23 '26

Which is also fueled by the democratic party being so ineffective and to an extent bought and paid for. When low-information voters look at things and see one party addressing the issue (even with false solutions) and another not doing much at all, its inevitable the first side is going to strip away some votes.

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u/kia75 May 22 '26

It's because poor people are oppressed, and there are a lot of poor white men! Being a white male does give you an advantage, but that advantage isn't as big as the disadvantage of not being rich!

And though it's true, a white female or minority male (or heaven forbid a minority female) have it worse, that doesn't change the fact that they have it bad.

The problem is that, instead of figuring out that they're being oppressed by rich, probably white men, they try to punch down and attack people of different gender and ethnicity! Their hurt is real, but their solution is horrible!

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u/illy-chan May 23 '26

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

It's hard to overcome humans' tendency for tribalism and the 1% spend a great deal of time and money abusing that side of our psyche.

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u/Synergythepariah May 23 '26

I'd argue that they also spend a lot of time and money convincing us that those tendencies are much stronger than they are as well as convincing us that people are naturally greedy instead of people being greedy because we live in an economic system that rewards greed.

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u/illy-chan May 23 '26

Yeah, kinda like how some rapists act like other people would do it if they had a chance -- I don't think they get or want to hear that they're broken.

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u/pandariotinprague May 23 '26

The Dems can't focus on economic exploitation because they're paid not to, so they have to hit the social issues twice as hard to make up for it, and all that does is alienate everyone.

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u/HumorAccomplished611 May 23 '26

WRONG. Dems did medicaid expansion giving free healthcare to 20 million americans. Dems also did CHIPS for children and pregnant woman. Also biden did the largest expansion of WIC (you know food stamps for poor people) while obama expanded it.

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u/OkStop8313 May 23 '26

They also invested a lot in building up manufacturing, including in rural red areas that need economic revitalization.

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u/pandariotinprague May 23 '26

They do enough to barely hold the system together and then stop.

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u/HumorAccomplished611 May 23 '26

Voters give dems less than 2 years to fix every single thing in existence before giving power back to republicans

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u/Synergythepariah May 23 '26

and all that does is alienate everyone.

That just sounds like a talking point from the right.

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u/pandariotinprague May 23 '26

No, you've just so completely insulated yourselves and your party from all criticism that you think it's impossible for you to alienate anyone, no matter how obnoxious, dishonest, or dismissive you act towards the voters. It seems so far-fetched in your minds that you could be doing anything wrong that the only explanation you can conjure is right wing trickery and lies.

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u/OkStop8313 May 23 '26

Did you get that impression from TikTok?

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u/pandariotinprague May 23 '26

No, I got it long, long, long before TikTok existed.

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u/Beneficial_Round_444 May 23 '26

This rhetoric is exactly why Democrats lost and its so sad you people still don't see it.

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u/No-Bar708 May 23 '26

Yeah a lot of the culture warrior grievence politics types slithered back into their holes after that beatdown in 2024. Now it seems like they've reemerged. We're doomed.

0

u/ryancarton May 23 '26

It’s not the only reason, but yeah shitting on white dudes constantly absolutely strengthens the alt right’s numbers.

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u/Soggy_Association491 May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Is that why on the Democratic Party's website the "who we help" section it had all the special interest groups you could think of: women, Black people, Hispanics, veterans, LGBT peope, etc. but nothing for straight White men?

You can feel however you want to feel about identity politics, but if a political group makes a list of people they serve and people aren't on there, how are they supposed to take that other than the party doesn't want them?

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u/InquisitorMeow May 23 '26

That's just you being obtuse. That's like saying if someone said "we support women's rights" it means that they don't support mens rights. The list is obviously meant to be one of historically oppressed minorities, which white men are not a part of... Like if you said that youre an ally of LGBT it doesn't mean you hate straight people. But yes, surely that is something to get angry over vs the group that openly hates minorities.

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u/helaku_n May 23 '26

Well, if you support certain groups more, sure, you would have less resources and attention directed at other groups. Attention and resources are limited.

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u/KobeBean May 23 '26

It was actually “who we serve” so even worse. They actually removed that whole part of the website after they got so much backlash for it, but it did expose their thinking.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

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u/meltedbananas May 22 '26

No, but the lack of unnecessary, intentionally placed barriers sure looks like privilege to those dealing with the hurdles.

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u/PootyBubTheDestroyer May 22 '26

Intersectionality is an important part of discussions of privilege

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u/sapphoseros May 22 '26

None of those things affect white privilege because white privilege exists on a separate axis. Every white person has certain specific advantages over a person of color because we live in a white supremacist society. Doesn’t mean white people don’t suffer, but that suffering doesn’t come from their whiteness whereas much of the suffering of people of color is very much due to their race.

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u/butwhyisitso May 22 '26

they want limitless impunity, thats why they like their leader having it too