from Hacker News

Political Bias on X before the 2025 German Federal Election

by DyslexicAtheist on 2/28/25, 10:43 PM with 12 comments

  • by amadeuspagel on 3/1/25, 8:58 AM

    Maybe populists just tweet better? Maybe populism, the way it is understood today, just is social media driven politics, so that "populists do better on social media" is a tautology?
  • by readthenotes1 on 2/28/25, 11:59 PM

    "These results show that X disproportionately highlights extremes of the German political spectrum, in particular the populist parties: left-wing BSW and right-wing AfD."

    I'm guessing rage baiting drives engagement...

    (And reminds me of Bertrand Russell's nobel prize speech in which he talks about what happens when two men are bored in a pub...

    https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1950/russell/le... )

  • by bitshiftfaced on 2/28/25, 11:51 PM

    What's the control that they're comparing this to? For example, how do you know AfD isn't more prevalent in headlines on media websites altogether?
  • by Phil_Latio on 3/1/25, 12:12 AM

    Remember that old study (which got flagged here!) which claimed Musk tuned the algorithms in favor of republicans starting on..... the day of the assassination attempt? Laughable!

    Well that old study got referenced in this study.

    "science"