A post on Twitter’s blog reveals that Twitter’s algorithm promotes right-leaning content more often than left — but the reasons for that remain unclear. The findings drew from an internal study on Twitter’s algorithmic amplification of political content.
During the study, Twitter looked at millions of tweets posted between April 1st and August 15th, 2020. These tweets were from news outlets and elected officials in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the US. In all countries studied, except Germany, Twitter found that right-leaning accounts “receive more algorithmic amplification than the political left.” It also discovered that right-leaning content from news outlets benefit from the same bias.