Twitter’s feed algorithm is harmful – Freethought Blogs –

We all know that Twitter is a cesspool of spambots, far right users, incels and outright Nazis. We know this has much to do with who gets promoted by the algorithms they use. One of these algorithms is the feed algorithm. If you don’t know, most social media don’t show you just the posts from people you follow, in the order they are posted. Instead they fill your feed with suggestions – and they post the posts completely out of order. This is nominally done to create engagement, but in Twitter’s case, it is also used to push specific transphobic, misogynist, racist viewpoints. In Twitter you can choose between algorithmic suggestions and getting a chronological timeline of the posts by the accounts you follow. If you choose a chronological feed, it will revert ba ck to the algorithmic feed after a while (or at least it did so when I was active on Twitter). An interesting study in Nature by Germain Gauthier, Roland Hodler, Philine Widmer & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, shows the danger of Twitters algorithmic feed The political effects of X’s feed algorithm Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm
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