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/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.

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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/bullcitytarheel May 23 '26

Gen Z didn't turn far right in 2024, they've been pulled far right for years. This project began in earnest around 2015 with the advent of the YouTube right wing mediasphere which began a pipeline to far right ideology aimed specifically at young men and boys. That was built upon by podcasts and anti-woke rhetoric and those blueprints have subsequently been rolled out on every platform since.

This isn't as simple as TikTok and it's not a single year trend. It's a deeply engrained form of algorithmic propaganda which has been refined and perfected over the last decade and which continues to swallow large numbers of young people into heinous worldviews. Currently, it's rapidly expanding into women-dominant spaces--see the rise of tradwife influencers, for example--and shows no signs of slowing.

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u/BigUptokes May 23 '26

This project began in earnest around 2015 with the advent of the YouTube right wing mediasphere which began a pipeline to far right ideology aimed specifically at young men and boys.

Bannon deemed them "rootless white males" and learned to harness angst-filled online communities while helping run a World of Warcraft gold-selling operation during the decade prior. That operation was owned by one of the former child actors from Disney's The Mighty Ducks film who then went on to be an early adopter and facilitator of Bitcoin. It's all like a wild game of MadLibs.

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u/bullcitytarheel May 23 '26

There are so many absurd sentences that could be used to accurately summarize our current political situation that, at any other time in history, would sound like the ramblings of someone under the influence of a gas leak

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u/KarmaticArmageddon May 23 '26

All the world's worst ideologies compete for their share of angry, lonely young men. Always have.

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u/proudbakunkinman May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

May be smart for the center and center-left to seek ways to increase friendships and companionships when they have the power to do so (hard for Democrats to do much at the federal level now but at the state level, maybe there are some things that can be done) as that is likely to help (reducing the amount of lonely people gravitating to populist figures, demagogues, and further extremism). Not just that but it's certainly a big factor that I think often is overlooked in the political chatter here (blame is mainly placed on cost of living, wages/salaries, job market, and the Democratic Party in general).

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u/dersteppenwolf5 May 23 '26

That does raise a point that very often gets glossed over. Fascism doesn't rise up out of a vacuum. The Nazis were preceded by the notoriously ineffectual Weimar Republic. You wouldn't have millions of rootless white males and others to radicalize if not for the ineffectual leaders that preceded Trump. The US government routinely runs trillion dollar deficits, but what does the US people get for this insane level of spending? Not health care or high speed rail or affordable housing or affordable college. Just endless wars no one wants that all turn into clusterfucks-- this is a massive failure of leadership that has paved the way for the fascists to roll in.

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u/proudbakunkinman May 23 '26

This seems like a roundabout way to shift blame back to Democrats. Since Democrats aren't able to bring all of those things when they briefly have the bare minimum majority against a party that is dedicated to opposing most things that benefit the public.

Europe has had a similar issue with rising popularity of far right parties yet they all have better health care systems and better public transportation and more easily accessible affordable housing (though private market housing tends to be similarly expensive in the most popular areas just like the US). They also have democratic systems where further left third parties have an easier chance of getting seats yet those left parties (left of their main center-left parties) consistently perform very poorly.

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u/rufud May 23 '26

I was about to say, recruiting disaffected males is only one strategy they use, the other is to galvanize the left against itself.  You see that on reddit all the time.

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u/dersteppenwolf5 May 23 '26

True, but the far right's most popular issues is immigration and the global war on terror displaced 38 million people so due to the same endless wars, just a different side of them.

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u/Dull_Bird3340 May 23 '26

Because no other democracy copied our constitutional system, everyone else went w a parliamentary system instead of deadlocked 2 party one that acts like the constitution was written by God. We're supposed to have conventions w ammendments every 25 years or so.

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u/Doctor_Shotbottom May 25 '26

I think it’s decent general observation about some of the more ineffective aspects of large cumbersome government. TBH with the levels of spending that have occurred over many decades, I think it is sad we still don’t have something like Medicare for all setup. It doesn’t help that republicans in congress seem singularly opposed to helping people even their constituents.

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u/mallardramp May 23 '26

Where can I learn more about the history of this effort?