Twitter algorithm boosts politically right-leaning posts more, new study claims

Microblogging site Twitter uses an algorithm that boosts the reach of politically right-leaning sources more than politically left-leaning sources, a new study has claimed. The algorithm is used by Twitter to customise the content that appears on its users' home timelines.

Professor Ferenc Huszar of Cambridge University and his colleagues used a randomised controlled group of nearly two million daily active Twitter users chosen by the platform to receive content in reverse-chronological order without personalisation and a treatment group representing 4% of all other accounts with personalised timelines to determine whether Twitter's algorithm amplifies left-leaning or right-leaning content.

The authors also looked at the algorithmic amplification of 6.2 million political news pieces that were shared in the US. According to the findings, the customisation algorithm favoured the amplification of tweets from politically right-leaning sources in six of the seven countries. Right-wing news services in the United States were also given special attention. Far-left and far-right outlets were not considerably amplified when compared to politically moderate publications, contrary to popular belief. The findings, according to the authors, add to the evidence-based discussion about the impact of personalisation algorithms in determining political content consumption.

A similar study, conducted between 1 April and 15 August 2020, covered 5% of the company's active users and could be one of the largest studies of its kind conducted by any of the major social media companies on how their products influence what people read and interact with online, and thus its societal impact. It comes just a week after a whistleblower identified Facebook's engagement-based algorithm as a major source of hate speech and false information. Twitter's algorithm reinforces right-wing political narratives, according to the study.

'Why these observed patterns exist is a substantially more difficult topic'

"...defining why these observed patterns exist is a substantially more difficult topic," Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter's director of software engineering, in a series of tweets outlining the findings, had said. The Twitter staffer had added in another tweet, "Twitter is a sociotechnical system -- our algos are responsive to what’s happening. What’s next is a root cause analysis — is this unintended model bias? Or is this a function of what & how people tweet, and things that are happening in the world? Or both?"

Experts have urged companies like Twitter and Facebook to share access with academic researchers in order to learn more about the potential problems that their products may cause. Concerns have arisen as a result of a series of controversies involving practically all major social media corporations, the most notable of which being Facebook.

(With inputs from ANI, Image: PTI)