Global Witness’ tests identified the most extreme bias on TikTok, where 78% of the political content that was algorithmically recommended to its test accounts, and came from accounts the test users did not follow, was supportive of the AfD party. (It notes this figure far exceeds the level of support the party is achieving in current polling, where it attracts backing from around 20% of German voters.)
On X, Global Witness found that 64% of such recommended political content was supportive of the AfD.
Meta’s Instagram was also tested and found to lean right over a series of three tests the NGO ran. But the level of political bias it displayed in the tests was lower, with 59% of political content being right-wing.
“One of our main concerns is that we don’t really know why we were suggested the particular content that we were,” Ellen Judson, a senior campaigner looking at digital threats for Global Witness, told TechCrunch in an interview. “We found this evidence that suggests bias, but there’s still a lack of transparency from platforms about how their recommender systems work.”
The findings chime with other social media research Global Witness has undertaken around recent elections in the U.S., Ireland, and Romania. And, indeed, various other studies over recent years have also found evidence that social media algorithms lean right — such as this research project last year looking into YouTube.
“We’re hoping that the Commission will take [our results] as evidence to investigate whether anything has occurred or why there might be this bias going on,” she added, confirming Global Witness has shared its findings with EU officials who are responsible for enforcing the bloc’s algorithmic accountability rules on large platforms.
Study of TikTok, X ‘For You’ feeds in Germany finds far-right political bias ahead of federal elections
Germany needs Romanian judges!
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/19/study-of-tiktok-x-for-you-feeds-in-germany-finds-far-right-political-bias-ahead-of-federal-elections/
@nepravda
I am most excited about a presentation of our work on italy-elt-archive.unimi.it with @manutenca.bsky.social and others. This is a richly annotated archive of English Language Teaching materials, printed in Italy in the 20th century. We will illustrate the analysis that it makes possible
Italy ELT Archive – Archive of...
Now travelling to #IRCDL in Udine ircdl2025.uniud.it, where I look forward to get some ideas about several projects I am currently working on.
21st Conference on Information...
No idiot walks alone:
"At The New York Times, Peter Baker has a column blithely speculating about which way Canadians might vote should they be annexed, concluding that Democrats would likely benefit."
https://prospect.org/world/2025-02-19-musk-trump-causing-dumbest-imperial-collapse-in-history/
BBC Analysis: Over half of LLM-generated news summaries have "significant issues"
>Fifty-one percent of responses were judged to have "significant issues" in at least one of these areas, the BBC found. Google Gemini fared the worst overall, with significant issues judged in just over 60 percent of responses, while Perplexity performed best, with just over 40 percent showing such issues.
>
>Accuracy ended up being the biggest problem across all four LLMs, with significant issues identified in over 30 percent of responses (with the "some issues" category having significantly more). That includes one in five responses where the AI response incorrectly reproduced "dates, numbers, and factual statements" that were erroneously attributed to BBC sources. And in 13 percent of cases where an LLM quoted from a BBC article directly (eight out of 62), the analysis found those quotes were "either altered from the original source or not present in the cited article."
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/02/bbc-finds-significant-inaccuracies-in-over-30-of-ai-produced-news-summaries/
@techtakes
The Onion: Democrats Blocked From Entering Capitol Building Due to 'Push' Door Labeled 'Pull'
https://midwest.social/post/23088963
#TheOnion
The most corrupt president in history -- a ranking that no longer has a close second -- screwed his cultists who bought into his memecoin scheme.
Longest title in the world says it all:
"A 2023 study concluded CAPTCHAs are 'a tracking cookie farm for profit masquerading as a security service' that made us spend 819 million hours clicking on traffic lights to generate nearly $1 trillion for Google"
You're cooking your eggs incorrectly
Periodic cooking of eggs - Com...
Georgian Public Assembly Established to Facilitate Resolution of Political Crisis
On February 8, the founding congress of the “Georgian Public Assembly” was held at “Theatre Factory 42,” officially establishing the organization. The Assembly aims to facilitate a peaceful and strategic solution to the current crisis and to return the country to the path of a democratic republic, a constitutional state and of a European integration. …
#Trump addressed the drought in arrival by ordering the completely pointless release of two dams.
Fortunately, he made sure to be shown on TV doing it.
Elon Musk Is The Biggest Loser From Trump’s Tariffs So Far
"Tesla stock declined 5%, the largest percentage loss of the 46 American public companies valued at $200 billion or more."
"The dip knocked $11.8 billion off of the net worth of Musk, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, by far the biggest loss of any billionaire; Musk is Tesla’s largest individual shareholder with a 13% stake and a further 9% equity bonus awaiting appeal."
"Tesla shares tanked as much as 7.5% in the morning, touching their lowest intraday level since Jan. 2."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/02/03/elon-musk-is-the-biggest-loser-from-trumps-tariffs-so-far/
@politics
Elon Musk as a gamer
https://awful.systems/post/3388357
Elon Musk as a gamer
https://awful.systems/post/3388357
Our Kickstarter is now live!
Here's the original first Pixelfed post from Xmas 2018. Like and share at will...
Studying how people interact, in the past (#CulturalAnalytics) and today (#EdTech #Crowdsourcing). Researcher at @IslabUnimi, University of Milan. Bulgarian activist for legal reform with @pravosadiezv. I use dedicated accounts for different languages.
My profile is searchable with https://www.tootfinder.ch/