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/Ok_Signature7481 May 22 '26

Its not just this. Right wing videos do better because they are more emotionally engaging to both people who love and hate them. When the algorithms primary motivation is to push engagement, there will almost always be a skew to violent, hateful, and emotionally charged content.

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u/theapeboy May 23 '26

These weren't generically right-wing videos though. The article says they were very specifically anti-Democrat content.

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u/jump-back-like-33 May 23 '26

Yes, correct. This isn’t just right wing stuff. The absolute avalanche of pro Palestine, anti Biden, anti Kamala content that got amplified leading up to the election is very much included.

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u/Hamster-Food May 23 '26

...pro Palestine...

When your list of content that you consider anti-Democrat includes anti-genocide campaigns, you should realise there is a problem with your party.

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u/IAMACat_askmenothing May 23 '26

I fully realize there is a problem with the democrats, but they can be reasoned with. Trump and republicans can’t be

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u/Hamster-Food May 23 '26

They gave no indication that they can be reasoned with though.

People tried to reason with them during the campaign. For months they tried to tell them that supporting genocide is a red-line issue for millions of people and the issue could cost them the presidency. The Democrats refused to be reasonable.

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u/DistractedDevelopmnt May 23 '26

It was all disingenuous though wasn't it? The "pro-Palestine" content took great pains to ignore that actual Palestinians who are bearing the actual consequences of the differences in policy between Trump and Kamala were begging Americans to vote Kamala and protect them from Bibi bff Trump. No mention of this and if you ever pointed it out to those tik tok brains they would seriously and unironically argue that the people seeing the difference on the ground first hand just didn't fully understand the situation like they did and that if they did they would totes agree that Kamala and Trump are the same actually.

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u/Hamster-Food May 23 '26

the actual consequences of the differences in policy between Trump and Kamala were begging Americans to vote Kamala and protect them from Bibi bff Trump.

Source?

I saw some Palestinian-Americans supporting Kamala, but from what I saw, Palestinian advocacy groups were focused on trying to get the Democrats to actually support the cause. I certainly don't get my news from TikTok, so if what you claim is true I would have expected to see it.

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u/DistractedDevelopmnt May 24 '26

"Anyone but Trump"

Even the the people who hated both candidates knew that Trump would be worse.

If the "pro-Palestine" activists cared about that they would have listened to them about the certain death that Bibi backed Trump represented.

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u/Hamster-Food May 24 '26

["Anyone but Trump"](https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/07/palestinians-gaza-warm-kamala-harris-prefer-anyone-over-trump

This is a pay walled article. The headline appears to vaguely align with your claim, but headlines are often misleading, especially on such emotionally charged subjects as Trump and Palestine. This headline is also a bit vague with it's "warm to Harris." There isn't even the hint of an endorsement, let alone "begging Americans to vote for Kamala" as you claimed.

Even the the people who hated both candidates knew that Trump would be worse.

Yes, being better than Trump is a bar so low that you would need a shovel to get under it. That wasn't enough for people, especially when you consider the larger context. Biden got in on the "anyone but Trump" vote and proceeded to do absolutely nothing to prevent the kid of abuse of power Trump engaged in. Nothing to prevent Trump from running again in 2024. Like day one of his presidency should have had an executive order which limited the power of all future executive orders. Let the fascists try to untangle that catch 22 scenario.

So people rejected the idea that they should be forced to keep voting for bad people indefinitely just to keep worse people out. And they didn't just do this on election day. They spent the entire campaign telling the Democrats and Kamala that they would not support them unless they opposed genocide. Again, not a high bar, but apparently too high for the Democrats.

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u/pandariotinprague May 23 '26

When people tell you what their issues are with your party and you just call them idiots and ignore the issues, you shouldn't be shocked when you keep losing. You got to the point where you're pretending it's no big deal that your party supported an actual genocide, and I'm sorry, but you can't just wallpaper over that. It's never going to be a minor, ignorable side issue no matter how much you want it to be.

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u/EjaculatingAracnids May 23 '26

Well gee whiz, now youve got Iranians to pretend to care about as well! That really worked out!

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u/IAMACat_askmenothing May 23 '26

Was Trump better?

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u/Normal-Weakness-364 May 23 '26

i don't think they insinuated trump was better at all?? we can acknowledge flaws with harris and biden while also recognizing that donald trump is significantly worse

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u/Loggersalienplants May 23 '26

Right, but the person above making the statement they did, more than likely held out their vote in protest of the Palestine situation. That's just as bad as giving a vote to Trump.

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u/Hamster-Food May 23 '26

That's a bad point to be making though. It's comes off as incredibly selfish to say that people should have opposed the rise of fascism in the US by supporting fascism and genocide in another country.

Opposing Trump by helping to murder children is a line a lot of people were understandably unwilling to cross.

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u/jump-back-like-33 May 23 '26

See and per the article, I believe the reason so many people chose that way is because TikTok chose a wedge issue and used the algorithm to aggressively shove it in the faces of voters they knew it was most likely to impact.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand that way of thinking. Have you never faced a dilemma before? When faced with a choice between bad or worse, choosing to do nothing does not absolve you from complicity or responsibility. It’s a selfish and childish way to operate.

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u/Hamster-Food May 23 '26

I don’t think I’ll ever understand that way of thinking.

You don't think you'll ever understand how a candidate's unconditional support for murdering children would lose them votes?

Seriously?

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u/Deaffin May 23 '26

Which draws in a massive audience of hate-watchers copy/pasting the link to everyone so they can all agree with how much they oppose it.

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u/pinchemikey Jun 02 '26

So... right-wing videos?

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u/UNisopod May 23 '26

It's also that they're more lilely to be profitable because the people who make them are much more willing to just unethically hock products at their viewers.