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The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. 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.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

World at One - 20/02/2026 - BBC Sounds News, analysis and comment from BBC Radio 4

David Dimbleby getting more candid with the advancing years. "Conspiracy of silence" around monarchy etc. 20 mins in: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Dennis Waterman, the star of 'Minder', sings the theme song of the popular television series. London born actor Dennis Waterman made his first film at the age of eleven. On television, he is… I Could Be So Good for You (Minder Theme) - Dennis Waterman, Ireland 1981

I Could Be So Good for You (Minder Theme) - Dennis Waterman, Ireland 1981 www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s-i...

Can the Ruling Class Speak? Talking about elites isn't just the realm of conspiracy theorists. In fact, it's a vital component of left-wing politics.

“Recognizing that [the elites] will organize in defence of their interests, or those they represent, is not paranoid conspiracy theory but a basic political reality, and one we need to confront.” jacobin.com/2018/10/ruli...

An American gets a divorce

Every USA thing in one video: An American gets a divorce www.youtube.com/shorts/MW2zb...

The Harry Hill podcast will propel Andy Burnham into a national office of one sort or another. "low level disruption", indeed.

YouTube video by Novara Media Expert Explains The Epstein Files: Interview With Richard Sanders

"Jeffrey Epstein visited 10 Downing Street in 2002 to meet with then-Prime Minister Tony Blair" www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgYS...

A Surprise Zone of Interest We are All Responsible for What Happens in our Community

“We need to get better at treating this like a business,” ICE Director Todd Lyons said of the deportation industrial complex at a Border Security Expo in Phoenix, AZ last year. “Like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”

www.welcometohellworld.com/a-surprise-z...

Totally forgot to add this but someone mentioned how eerie it is that a train track is running near the area and it actually runs directly behind the proposed concentration camp. This video is from the parking lot:

Highlighting the speaker who stood in front of the Surprise mayor and told him to consider what the Mayor of Ohrdruf must’ve thought before he died by suicide: “He might have thought ‘how is this my fault I had no jurisdiction over this’ maybe he said ‘this site was not subject to local zoning.’”

It’s hard to put into perspective how truly massive the warehouse is that was recently sold by the Rockefeller Group to the Department of Homeland Security for $70 million to build a concentration camp in Surprise, AZ. Across the street is a huge neighborhood and a school. It’s 400,000-square-feet.

brandfinance.com/press-releas...

“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

—Peter Thiel, 2009

Related: Steve Rosenberg is a brave man. I'm assuming his work is only possible because of the structure that supports him / gives him some cover.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

i say this with love because everyone starts somewhere, but it's just that, sometimes you see someone with a massive platform and they're like "it kind of seems like republicans favor the rich?"

one of my strongest beliefs is that we're in our situation right now bc some of the most prominent talking heads (e.g. joe rogan, andrew schulz) are learning about politics in their 40s and 50s, instead of their teens and early 20s, and we have to go along for the ride as they learn basic things

Democracy dies in oligarchy.

We gotta come up with a better system than “everything rests on whether these twelve billionnaires are nice”

I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.

Someone please let me know if there's anything in the Epstein files that explains why Joi Ito's mediocre photos of technologists were lauded (2008-ish). Still bemused by it, even now. Many thanks.

The US was supposed to be more resilient to autocracy because its Constitution, administrative state, and civil society (mostly business) decentralized authority. But this decentralization may have actually made civil society institutions easier to extort one by one.

As I used to say, journalism isn't a hat you put on, it's a process you follow – and it's done by teams as much as individuals. Behind every word that gets published as journalism stands a team of people who checked, polished and edited that copy.

Damn you’re telling me the technology that was very obviously intended for unregulated speculation and criminal enterprises was used to do awful things

🤢

“The masses of the people, however, did not realize how much the industrial tycoons, the Army and the State were benefiting from the ruin of the currency.”

— William L. Shirer, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany”

YouTube video by AS farage thanking Bannon and Breitbart!

Also: vid; Farage thanks Bannon for Brexit help www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3o9...

Epstein files: Bannon saying he's an advisor to Farage, that his EU influence will allow them to "shut down any crypto legislation", & a convo between Thiel & Epstein appearing to say that Brexit is part of their plans for a return to tribalism.

Braverman saying Brexit was a left wing operation at -59 mins. Attention spans are so shattered that lies just roll by...

www.youtube.com/live/I63y8qz...

Prove that you're human song