How Elon Musk is boosting the British Right — For nine months, Sky News’ Data and Forensics team has been investigating whether X’s algorithm amplifies right-wing and extreme content. It does.

by Crow-Me-A-River

40 comments

  2. I experienced this firsthand with a sudden change in my algorithm and having to block a bunch of accounts – I typically use my twitter for Sims content, so it was jarring. And secondly when I used their news feature.

    When a major thing happens that garners a lot of discussion on Twitter, it collates that under a ‘Today’s News’ tab. When the awful synagogue attack happened, I clicked on that tab, and the first 3 posts it showed me were from Tommy Robinson’s account. Then Laura Loomer. Then Nigel Farage. And a number of smaller right-wing accounts. It took quite a bit of scrolling before I even got to the official news posts, or statements, or what officials were saying. And the posts it showed me first weren’t even the ones with the most engagement or most likes, it was bizarre.

  5. I’m sure this will come as a surprise to literally no one. He’s an interfering tosspot.

  6. I could have told you that. I only have X for a work account. We only follow similar charities so it’s all positive supportive stuff.

    Endless divisive content it pushed at me. Elon’s posts, a certain writer of mediocre children’s books, GB News etc.

  7. >Left-wing users saw almost the same amount of **left-wing** and **right-wing** content, even though they only followed left-wing accounts.

    >But only 14% of the political content sent to our right-leaning users was **left-wing**.

    >The neutral users saw twice as much **right-wing content** as **left-wing content**.

    There is also an over-representation of extreme content.

    I don’t think anyone would be surprised by this, but it is grounding to see it all laid out.

  8. It’s actually crazy, in very limited time on Twitter over the years. I’ve followed Celtic football club and a few comic book creators. Posted some p
    Stuff from Instagram and messaged about some comics. So geeky stuff and a left leaning political alignment football team.

    I downloaded x and well my entire feed was right wing racist posts telling me the UK is being taken over by black men attacking white women. Videos of no context assaults. Profiles with pictures of templars and crusaders.

    It’s laughable that musk is the same sort of person telling me I’m being lied to and manipulated and that democracy is dead. I had to actually delete the app as even when I hide these posts and profiles it just kept showing me more. Pathetic.

  9. And since all government announcements happen on their Twitter accounts they get to be all *Shocked Face* when the vast majority of people don’t want white supremacy and are just too busy trying to keep a roof over their head to care what some Boer Whore says in his fenced garden.

  10. White South African who grew up during apartheid and made his money from exploiting black and brown people, is odiously racist

    More as we get it

  12. Not quite sure how this relates to Scotland..? Mods, do your job. Remove.

  13. Of course it does, social media is the biggest mouthpiece you could have. Everyone was laughing that the company wasn’t profitable but he didn’t buy it for that.

    Create a new account on there now and see how much right wing content comes onto your feed

  15. He’s using Twitter to radicalize, push hate and violence and our governments are doing absolutely nothing.

  17. There is a reason why many departed to blue sky. Twitter sucked before Musk and it’s somehow even worse now.

  18. Ok, so let’s not have his companies anyway near a government contract then

  20. Luckily enough Elon Musk funded Tommy Robinsons recent court fees which the judge ruled in favour of Tommy Robinson and absolutely slated the actions of the Police.
    Thank God for Elon. Can’t wait for the next election.

  22. Threads is the same. Zuckerberg is complicit too.

    Hundreds of no-profile-pic accounts with usernames like ‘johnsmith432’ posting shit about Reform, immigrants or Sadiq Khan. Many of them appeared after the train knife attack.

    I suspect many of them are bots because they never reply to anyone replying to them and they were pretty dormant until recently.

    I don’t even use threads that much and then I log in and my feed is just ‘imagrints bad’ suddenly. A lot of MAGA shit too.

  25. Aye, no shit – it’s a toxic hellscape of idiocy and hate

  26. We should just ban Twitter and Facebook. They bring no positives to our society.

  27. I think successive governments failure to enact the will of the electorate.. make massive changes to national makeup and society and lying to the population time and again have done more to fuel the right than anything else

  32. Can’t trust him. He can’t even control his AI: Grok.

  34. Why is it that it’s always fucking ugly chinless pube beard wanks who think they’re the master race? 

  35. I mean, most British main stream media and most social media platforms boost and leans towards left leaning media and agendas.

    Why is anyone surprised that media has a bias, it all does, just people don’t like the ones that lean away from their preferred end of the spectrum.

  36. If you sign up to Twitter with a brand new account, with a brand new Email address, and don’t select any “interests”, the default content you get pushed is right wing stuff. Loads of right wing US news, videos taken by Israeli soldiers, drone attack videos from Russian troops etc. Try it. It’s pretty bad.

  37. I’m not encouraging political violence at all. In fact, there should be far less.

    I iust believe the reduced amount of political violence that does remain should be redirected to certain key individuals.

  39. Is it maybe something to with the fact all the left fucked off to bluesky?

  40. Time to consider social media companies as publishers responsible for all content published on them.

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