Of course, that is part of its purpose, as a new report in 404 Media reminds. The outlet reports on a new study published in the Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences academic journal, which found that reply generation is the biggest indication of what will make a post appear in someone’s For You page. This in itself isn’t especially novel information; algorithms have long prioritized engagement, which often means they are designed to provoke anger in a user. But what is more new is the revelation that the platform serves people who call themselves Democrats more ragebait than anyone else. However, this seems to at least partially correspond to Democrats’ behavior on the platform.
In the study, researchers measured volunteers on a “values inventory,” which measured users’ attitudes towards things like “tolerance,” “dominance,” “hedonism,” and “openness to change.” Then, researchers monitored which posts users engaged with, and found that replies are much more heavily weighted in terms of showing you more of that same subject. “The algorithm learns that you get outraged and then continues to serve more content in that direction and that seems to be particularly true of the Democratic users of our study,” said researcher Ziv Epstein. “Democrat users confront the abundant value-misaligned content by replying to it, which the algorithm in turn preferentially learns from and continues to feed them.”
The researcher declined to get too speculative about the reasons for this, as in whether it says more about the makeup of the site or the psychology of Democrats (or, if we may venture a guess, a bit of both). But it’s certainly another example that trying to argue with right-wing folks on X is only going to serve you more of them.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.