Comment by blindriver

2 days ago

Given the fact that the Republicans won, doesn't that actually make sense? More people consumed the pro-Republican content because they intended to vote Republican.

It's probably a bit more nuanced then that. You have to look at the people that use Tiktok... are they generally more left or right? I don't know the answer. I would have said they are younger and therefore more left leaning, however, I think that's becoming less and less true.

  • Education was abandoned. And as people who are old enough know perfectly well, since this show has been played before: uneducated young people are largely extreme-right.

Good point, but the article does say

> "ideological imbalance occurs regardless of a user’s initial political interests"

But yeah, even in the absence of any kind of algorithmic bias, I'd still expect there to be an imbalance for the reason that you point out.

If it were the other way around people would be accusing the CCP of trying to rig the election for the Democrats, but sure. When it helps the Republicans I guess there's nothing to see here.

It's more that right wing voters engage with and believe more misinformation and lies as long as it accords with their biases. Foreign state sponsored actors have long been using social media to divide the masses and it works way better on Republican voters, though they'll take any suckers they can get. Also the reason why there's so many Right wing political commentators and pundits, because there's a lot more money on the Right wing side of the grift. Right wing serves capital after all.