Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk’s platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users’ feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X’s algorithm has persistent effects on users’ current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
It depends on material too. Algorithm makes recommendations based on similar video, and something like Star Wars for instance has a lot of angry conservatives ranting about it so can skew towards youtube recommendations including them in Star Wars content.
On the other hand searching Expanse is less likely to see those conservative rant channels, since not as much content like that is made for it.
So even though Expanse and Star Wars are scifi, viewing and searching both of them will have different levels of right wing centered media you are likely to be recommended.
And depending on topic of interest the ideology of the most popular channels which youtube promotes also dictates what you’ll be recommended even if you don’t watch the channel. Like if you search PC stuff LTT will always dominate the first few pages of search results.