this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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Recommendation algorithms operated by social media giants TikTok and X have shown evidence of substantial far-right political bias in Germany ahead of a federal election that takes place Sunday, according to new research carried out by Global Witness.

The non-government organization (NGO) undertook an analysis of social media content displayed to new users via algorithmically sorted “For You” feeds — finding both platforms skewed heavily toward amplifying content that favors the far-right AfD party in algorithmically programmed feeds.

Global Witness’ tests identified the most extreme bias on TikTok, where 78% of the political content that was algorithmically recommended to its test accounts, and came from accounts the test users did not follow, was supportive of the AfD party. (It notes this figure far exceeds the level of support the party is achieving in current polling, where it attracts backing from around 20% of German voters.)

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Legalation banning algorithmic feeds and replacing them with chronological posts from users you subscribe to is imperative to fixing our politics and improving the mental health of young people.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I would definitely not want chronological order. I think people tend to forget how shit those are and how much low quality content there is, especially the bigger communities get. Try it right now on Lemmy or Reddit. I find the Active and Hot sorting on Lemmy pretty good, and those are not designed as algorithmical heroine.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Sure! We can do chronological, most liked, most disliked, most comments. Solid metrics though, nothing that the social media companies can obscure

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Chronological is an algorithm too bruh. There's nothing inherently wrong with algorithms, they're just a tool. Modern social media tends to use them for engagement and advertiser$$, which is harmful.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, the extreme view about algorithms that's prevalent in the Fediverse feels a bit like someone finding a Nazi pamphlet on the ground and deciding that the problem is paper.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

or the printer. Great analogy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Are you three even old enough to remember an internet before the algorithms?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

It still exists in some places

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Simple sorts are fundamentally different than the algorithms people are talking about.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What if I want to install my own algorithm on a Pixelfed feed? What if developers make a variety of competing, open source algorithms? Y'all gonna ban all those "algorithms" too? Be careful of calling for state violence to impose your vague opinions.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

God i love the tag feature on boost for lemmy

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

God i love the tag feature on voyager for lemmy

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If you were to relate this to tiktok, how would you ever find people to follow?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The same way we used to? Tags and the ability to search for things, along with word of mouth from your friends and media you follow.

Even before the internet, people found new things like music or books by interacting with those communities, looking in places where those things can be found and finding stuff they like.

We don't need some algorithm to spoon feed us things it wants us to like, we can find it ourselves with minimal effort.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

IDK I really liked StumbleUpon even before all this stuff was invented... Sometimes you don't know what you like or what to find things that would normally be outside of your bubble.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

StumbleUpon started out being completely random, so it wasn't driven by mining your cookies and feeding the data into an algorithm. I don't know if it eventually became a nefarious advertising front, but I recall it being pretty innocent. Anyway, I really enjoyed that website before link aggregators rose to such dominance.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Reddit killed Stumbleupon for me, that's how I discovered it to be honest. Before then I'd used Digg but that got killed with new Digg

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Making a video sharing app which isn't based as much around a single algorithmic feed?