The Political Effects of Twitter’s Feed Algorithm ⇥ nature.com

Germain Gauthier, et al., in a recent peer-reviewed paper in Nature:

Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk’s platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. […]

One can be pedantic about the use of “algorithmic” and “the algorithm” to describe a particular set of rules for recommending tweets, given that you could also say a reverse-chronological timeline is its own kind of algorithm. A simple one, to be sure, but an algorithm. I will not quibble with this.

Here is one thing I will be pedantic about, though: this study is not an examination of the “political effects of X’s feed algorithm”, as the title of the study suggests. It was conducted in 2023 — just a little bit after Elon Musk bought the platform and when it was still named Twitter. That is a long time ago in online platform terms, and the recommendations engine has probably changed a lot since — but almost certainly not in the direction of political even-handedness — even though the GitHub commit log suggests it has not been.

This study’s design seems better to me than a report published shortly after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, which I found limited and unconvincing.

There should always be a way for users to set a reverse-chronological timeline, and to opt out of recommendations features. We should be suspicious of any platform that refuses to trust us with control over our own experience.