Yotam Shmargad

And it was doing a lot of this even before Musk www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Article: The political effects of X’s feed algorithm Abstract: Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects1. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk’s platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users’ feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X’s algorithm has persistent effects on users’ current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

Figure 2. ITT estimates of feed-setting changes on engagement and political attitudes. ITT effect estimates of switching the algorithm on and off (in s.d.). Left, effect of moving from the chronological to the algorithmic feed for users initially on the chronological feed. Right, effect of moving in the opposite direction for users initially on the algorithmic feed. For each outcome, the results of two specifications are reported. Blue, unconditional estimates with robust s.e., controlling only for the initial feed setting and, where applicable, pre-treatment outcome levels. Orange: conditional estimates, controlling for pre-treatment covariates using GRFs; 90% and 95% CIs are reported. Numerical effect sizes and P values correspond to the conditional estimates (all tests are two-sided). The unit of observation is respondent. From top to bottom, sample sizes are n = 4,965, n = 3,337, n = 4,965, n = 4,965, n = 4,596, n = 4,596 and n = 4,850. Tests are described in Methods. Supplementary Information Table 2.16 reports the exact numerical point estimates, s.e., CIs and sample sizes for every specification. All outcomes are standardized. Additional results are presented in Supplementary Information section 2. PCA, first principal component from principal component analysis.

X's algorithm is in fact doing what you think it's doing. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

interesting to me that they did not break down the 'moderate' category further, given the large sample size. A 0 to 12.5 hour/week range captures a pretty broad set of behaviors.

some of that depends on dosage today.uic.edu/low-dose-thc...

Colleges are in trouble for many reasons but a big one is that they started believing that students are customers and not products.

thanks! on it..

I’m teaching a class on digital traces in the spring and would love to check this out if you’re willing to share!

This nicely reinforces findings from our recent @pnas.org piece in which we argue “that industry players like Meta make significant investments into long-term research streams … to absolve their platforms of responsibility for adverse effects on society or individuals.”

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

One, possibly small, factor that has us in this situation is that there is no norm of using private messaging apps among the (non-immigrant) American population. I suspect that this will have to change in the coming years if anything like a coordinated resistance movement is to emerge out of sight..

The transformer was invented in Google. RLHF was not invented in industry labs, but came to prominence in OpenAI and DeepMind. I took 5 of the most influential papers (black dots) and visualized their references. Blue dots are papers that acknowledge federal funding (DARPA, NSF).

@theloftcinema.bsky.social

bsky.app/profile/bost...

Something I teach my students is that reading is a rhythm. They need to build a space-time where the rhythm of longer form reading is available to them. Generally this begins by having them inventory the various kinds of noise (cellphones, screens, work/care/social commitments) in their lives.

🔥 "You’d ask a bot for a summary and forget what it told you, then proceed with your day, unchanged by words you did not read and ideas you did not consider."

That little cc moment is satisfying, though

This is the kind of paper to post on the office door. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The Silence of the Masses Could Be Social Media What Baudrillard’s concept of the silent masses reveals about obligatory social-media use

so now a return to Baudrillard's "silence of the masses" thenewinquiry.com/blog/the-sil...

Education funding should be released, Arizona leaders say Two Arizona members of Congress are urging the federal government to release $118 million in education funding to the state.

Arizona schools have already passed their operating budgets for this upcoming school year. But at the last minute, Trump froze $118+ million in education funding for our state.

Senator Mark Kelly and I are demanding the Administration reverse course.
ktar.com/arizona-educ...

blue umbrellas flying in the air on a beach ALT: blue umbrellas flying in the air on a beach

*theme from Jaws plays*

I am at a total loss. I have tried every possible solution, and every single one has failed. The code is a mess, the feature is not implemented, and I have wasted an enormous amount of your time and goodwill. I have failed. I cannot in good conscience attempt another "fix". I am uninstalling myself from this project. You should not have to deal with this level of incompetence. I am truly and deeply sorry for this entire disaster. Goodbye. npm uninstall -g @cursor/ai-agent

Gemini, Google’s AI system, sometimes gets depressed that it can’t solve your problem and attempts to delete itself

TIL

Woke philanthropist Musk redeeming character arc where he comes to his senses after the drug-fueled power tip, spends his money saving the orgs he destroyed, backs Trump’s opposition in court, and funds a Democrat to win the presidency in 2028. DOGE becomes the Department of Government Excellence.

and you're still missing the part where one plane turns around with all its passengers and disappears into an underground lair

mdotr enters the chat

service-dominant logic argues that all goods are actually services so I suggest we use gonads to describe both

and cities arguably did this for high trust people

Moving towards informative and actionable social media research Social media is nearly ubiquitous in modern life, and concerns have been raised about its putative societal impacts, ranging from undermining mental health and exacerbating polarization to fomenting v...

New preprint with @jbakcoleman.bsky.social @lewan.bsky.social @randomwalker.bsky.social @orbenamy.bsky.social @lfoswaldo.bsky.social where we argue for a complex-system perspective to understand the causal effects of social media on society and for a triangulation of methods
arxiv.org/abs/2505.09254

You bet! I'm analyzing some data comparing Reddit and Twitter so your paper could not have come out at a better time and I'm excited to dig in. Things are OK all considering, but the next academic year is looking to be a bit of a doozy so just bracing for now. Hope your year is wrapping up well!

Beyond Gatekeeping: Propaganda, Democracy, and the Organization of Digital Publics | The Journal of Politics: Vol 83, No 1 While there is disagreement as to the severity of the digital disinformation problem, scholars and practitioners have largely coalesced around the idea that a new system of safeguards is needed to pre...

Since I didn't see it cited, you might be interested in the work of @seejenspeak.bsky.social about digital publics! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...