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No. Not You. Twitter

Shankar Narayan
4 min readOct 22, 2021

Twitter algorithm amplifies conservative content more than that of the political left

Photo by Alan Rodriguez on Unsplash

Okay. I did not expect Twitter to be a saint.

It is challenging to overlook an opportunity when dealing with a competitor who makes billions every month but refuses to let go of the millions in commissions from hosting the crazies.

No one expects a corporation to be a saint. But is it too much to ask not to be an idiot? Because that’s the word that pops out when you read the “internal evaluation of Twitter’s recommendation algorithms.”

“Our results reveal a remarkably consistent trend: In 6 out of 7 countries studied, the mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic amplification than the mainstream political left,” the researchers said in a 27-page report.

Algorithms crave engagement. It is the only way to make users stay. The problem is not the insatiable desire for engagement. It is the desperate want to find anything that attracts sufficient clicks and spread it with utter disregard to after-effects.

When you “have algorithms that make sure that if you are starting to lean toward something bad … then the algorithm says, ‘I’ve got a four-hour manifesto you’ve got to see.’ We have…

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Shankar Narayan
Shankar Narayan

Written by Shankar Narayan

He didn't care what he had or what he had left, he cared only about what he must do.

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