{"id":17619,"date":"2025-02-21T09:36:52","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T08:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alexandrageese.eu\/?p=17619"},"modified":"2026-11-09T12:59:31","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T11:59:31","slug":"so-much-for-freedom-of-expression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexandrageese.eu\/en\/so-much-for-freedom-of-expression\/","title":{"rendered":"So much for freedom of expression: Musk’s algorithm favours far-right and pro-Putin German parties on X\/Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear friends and followers,<\/p>\n

Why am I actually being shown this? This is a question that everyone who is active on social media asks themselves. Now, a new study<\/a> by researchers from Germany, Ireland and the USA, using X\/Twitter as an example, shows how strongly the algorithm favours the content of some German parties ahead of tomorrow\u2019s general election and devalues others.<\/p>\n

To do this, the researchers analysed how often content from the various German parties appeared in the \u2018For you\u2019 feed, the section created by the platform’s recommendation algorithm. If X really is about freedom of expression, as Musk always claims, there should be no differences between the parties.<\/p>\n

But the opposite is the case: <\/b>While tweets from the SPD and the Greens make it into the \u2018For you\u2019 feed 6-12 times less often, content from the BSW, CSU, AfD and FDP, but also from the Left Party and the CDU, is displayed to users 1.4 to 4 times more often. That doesn’t sound like much, but the authors explain that extrapolated to thousands of pieces of content, it has a major effect. Here is a graphic from the study that illustrates this well:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If you look more closely at the study, you can also see that far-right AfD posts appear most frequently in the \u2018For You\u2019 feed. They account for 37.9% of the posts in the feed, although AfD politicians only posted 15.2% of all tweets from politicians during this period. Similarly, posts from the BSW made up 10.6% of tweets in the For You feed, although their politicians only made up 1.4% of politician tweets.<\/p>\n

These results show that X disproportionately highlights the extremes of the German political spectrum and promotes two parties: BSW and AfD.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The four most mentioned users are: (1) Elon Musk, who supports the AfD, (2) Alex Jones, an American far-right radio host, and (3-4) Dennis Hohloch and Stephan Brandner of the AfD. Of the posts by the 100 most mentioned users, 47% are from users who are either AfD members or supporters of the AfD, far-right ideology or conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n