Enabling the ‘for you’ algorithm on social network X leads users to adopt more conservative political views, according to a study of nearly 5,000 users of the social media platform.
The study also noted that this trend persists even after users disable the filter and return to the chronological feed (normal version).
Details of the research, conducted by an international team of scientists from Italy, Switzerland and France, were published in the journal Naturethe Efe agency reported on Wednesday.
For many people, social networks have become the main source of information, which has generated concern about misinformation, polarization and the influence of algorithms (which filter, select and order content in feeds personalized to retain users).
Some previous large-scale experiments—including a collaboration with Meta—have found little evidence that turning off the algorithm that filters information and returning to a feed chronological changes the political attitudes of users.
But these studies were unable to determine whether early exposure to the algorithm had already shaped these opinions, the authors pointed out.
To clarify this, they carried out an independent experiment with 4,965 X users in the United States during the summer of 2003, six months after South African businessman Elon Musk bought the company, then called Twitter, and a year before he publicly declared his support for the Republican candidate Donald Trump, current president of the United States.
Study participants were randomly assigned to either an algorithmic feed (a news filter) or the timeline (the standard version) for seven weeks.
They also interviewed participants before and after the experiment and analyzed timeline content and user behavior online using a browser extension that allowed them to monitor timeline content and online interactions.
The results revealed that users assigned to the algorithmic feed interacted more with the platform, adopted more right-wing political views, and were more likely to follow conservative political activists.
On the other hand, when users were moved from the algorithmic feed to the chronological feed, their opinions and behaviors had little effect.
Furthermore, content analysis revealed that the algorithm displayed more conservative and activist publications, while reducing the visibility of traditional media outlets, as the study points out.
For the authors, these results demonstrate that social media algorithms “significantly shape political attitudes” and that this effect persists even after removing algorithmic selection.
Furthermore, they warned that algorithms influence not only what users see, but also the digital political environment in which they live.
The authors also warned about the limitations of the study, stressing, firstly, that the results must be restricted to network X and, secondly, that the time period of the experiment does not allow determining the long-term effects.
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