[logicalfails]

That doesn't really prove that much. They only made 3 accounts on X, then with each account they followed the 4 major parties and their leaders. Not a very good sample size.

Additionally, the underlying algo could lean toward to what causes more engagement rather than equally tailoring each party. Without having any information personally about German politics or their cultural engagement with social media, I can only anecdotally say that in America, it appears to me that the ones most engaged with social media on X are more often than not right leaning. More of the left-leaning engagement seems increasingly moving towards other outlets, such as Bluesky.

[amelius]

Social media is a populist's dream come true.

All the anger is amplified through an algorithm and you can't even say it's the algorithm's fault.

[tzs]

> I can only anecdotally say that in America, it appears to me that the ones most engaged with social media on X are more often than not right leaning. More of the left-leaning engagement seems increasingly moving towards other outlets, such as Bluesky.

Isn't that movement because Musk changed X to increase promotion of right-wing things and decrease promotion of left-wing things?

Before Musk Twitter did promote right-wing stuff more than left-wing stuff. I don't have a cite but there was a paper published by researchers who had been given full access to internal Twitter data that showed this.

That level of right-leaning is probably the level of right-leaning you get from the natural level of engagement you get on a fairly neutral platform from right-wing people being more likely to engage than left-wing people.

[somenameforme]

After Elon bought Twitter, they ended up losing something like 10% of their users. That's going to be made up mostly of highly ideological ostensibly left-leaning Americans, likely with a much higher than average "engagement." And the lion's share of that happened long before there were any meaningful algorithmic changes. That alone is going to create a meaningful shift in the status quo on overtly political topics.

[motorest]

> That doesn't really prove that much.

You seem confused. France launched a criminal probe, whose goal is to investigate whether these types of biases reflect actual manipulation from Twitter. You are presented with evidence suggesting these biases exist. Now France is expected to look into them. Their findings will either support a criminal case, reject a criminal case, or simply not support further investigations.

> Pushing antisemitism, holocaust denial, and supremacist content is not ok, even if you argue they are only pushing extremist content for the clicks (which is a laughably bad hypothesis as Twitter's business model depends on the platform having mainstream appeal)

[retinaros]

this is the playbook. they dont need to prove it beyond some weak deduction mecanism. they did it for romania to cancel an election