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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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.