At least, that’s what I’ve heard from conservative pundits and politicians. The reality, however, appears to be rather different. A new study by Twitter found that the platform’s algorithms actually amplify right-wing voices. The research revealed that tweets from right-wing politicians and news outlets are both amplified on Twitter’s algorithmically ranked Home timeline. However, the social network isn’t sure why. Rumman Chowdhury, the head of Twitter’s machine learning, ethics, transparency and accountability team, tweeted that the company will now investigate the causes:
— Rumman Chowdhury (@ruchowdh) October 21, 2021 The first part of the study examined millions of tweets by elected officials in seven countries (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the US). In every country other than Germany, tweets from accounts on the political right received higher algorithmic amplification than those on the political left when studied as a group. Notably, however, the recommender systems did not amplify extreme ideologies over more moderate ones. Per the study paper: The researchers also analyzed whether the recommendation algorithms amplify political content from news outlets in the US. To this, they examined hundreds of millions of Tweets containing links to articles shared by people on Twitter. They found that right-leaning news sources were also favoured by the algorithmic system. Twitter’s study is not the first to contradict the claim that conservatives are suppressed on social media. Or the second. Or the third. It is, however, unusual for a platform to share so much internal research into algorithmic recommendations. I find it hard to imagine Facebook providing similar transparency. Greetings Humanoids! Did you know we have a newsletter all about AI? You can subscribe to it right here.
