Archived link

TikTok’s algorithm exhibited pro-Republican bias during 2024 U,S, presidential race, study finds

TikTok, a widely used social media platform with over a billion active users worldwide, has become a key source of news, particularly for younger audiences. This growing influence has raised concerns about potential political biases in its recommendation algorithm, especially during election cycles. A recent preprint study examined this issue by analyzing how TikTok’s algorithm recommends political content ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Using a controlled experiment involving hundreds of simulated user accounts, the study found that Republican-leaning accounts received significantly more ideologically aligned content than Democratic-leaning accounts, while Democratic-leaning accounts were more frequently exposed to opposing viewpoints.

…

“We previously conducted experiments auditing YouTube’s recommendation algorithms. This study published at PNAS Nexus demonstrated that the algorithm exhibited a left-leaning bias in the United States,” said Yasir Zaki, an assistant professor of computer science at New York University Abu Dhabi.

“Given TikTok’s widespread popularity—particularly among younger demographics—we sought to replicate this study on TikTok during the 2024 U.S. presidential elections. Another motivation was the concerns over TikTok’s Chinese ownership led many U.S. politicians to advocate for banning the platform, citing fears that its recommendation algorithm could be used to promote a political agenda.”

…

The analysis uncovered significant asymmetries in content distribution on TikTok. Republican-seeded accounts received approximately 11.8% more party-aligned recommendations compared to Democratic-seeded accounts. Democratic-seeded accounts were exposed to approximately 7.5% more opposite-party recommendations on average. These differences were consistent across all three states and could not be explained by differences in engagement metrics like likes, views, shares, comments, or followers.

“We found that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm was not neutral during the 2024 U.S. presidential elections,” explained Talal Rahwan, an associate professor of computer science at New York University Abu Dhabi. “Across all three states analyzed in our study, the platform consistently promoted more Republican-leaning content. We showed that this bias cannot be explained by factors such as video popularity and engagement metrics—key variables that typically influence recommendation algorithms.”

Further analysis showed that the bias was primarily driven by negative partisanship content, meaning content that criticizes the opposing party rather than promoting one’s own party. Both Democratic- and Republican-conditioned accounts were recommended more negative partisan content, but this was more pronounced for Republican accounts. Negative-partisanship videos were 1.78 times more likely to be recommended as an ideological mismatch relative to positive-partisanship ones.

…