Recommendation algorithms operated by social media giants TikTok and X have shown evidence of substantial far-right political bias in Germany ahead of a federal election that takes place Sunday, according to new research carried out by Global Witness.

The non-government organization (NGO) undertook an analysis of social media content displayed to new users via algorithmically sorted “For You” feeds — finding both platforms skewed heavily toward amplifying content that favors the far-right AfD party in algorithmically programmed feeds.

Global Witness’ tests identified the most extreme bias on TikTok, where 78% of the political content that was algorithmically recommended to its test accounts, and came from accounts the test users did not follow, was supportive of the AfD party. (It notes this figure far exceeds the level of support the party is achieving in current polling, where it attracts backing from around 20% of German voters.)

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  • c1a5s1c
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    302 days ago

    There’s a German game called Wolf. Where two people are the wolf and the rest are the villagers. Each turn the two wolves open their eyes and pick a villager to kill, while the villagers keep their eyes shut. Then everyone guesses who the wolves are. If both wolves are caught, the game is over. Almost always, the wolves win.

    Moral of the story, an informed minority will almost always defeat an uninformed majority.

    I hope it doesn’t come to this in Germany…

    • @[email protected]
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      112 days ago

      This game is either “mafia” or “werewolves” in Poland. Really fun to play but it sucks how much real life mirrors it…

    • @[email protected]
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      11 day ago

      Fascinating game. You get to learn what amazing liars people can be. The devil really is a squirrel.

    • @Siegfried
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      2 days ago

      Oh, we played wolf with my german grandmother in Argentina. I never knew it was a german folk game. Thank you for sharing this.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 days ago

        I live in the US, we’ve always called it “mafia”. It probably has a million names. Among Us is based on the same game

      • @[email protected]
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        82 days ago

        In Germany, we also call this game ‘werewolf’. Never heard of ‘wolf’ alone, except for the animal.

        • c1a5s1c
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          62 days ago

          Das ist so :) I just shortened it, because I wasn’t sure english speakers would know the word

          • @BillTongg
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            92 days ago

            Yes, this is interesting! ‘Wer’ (meaning ‘man’) came from Old High German with the Anglo Saxons 1,500 years ago, and was part of Old English. It then became ‘were’ in Middle English and remains as part of werewolf (‘man wolf’) in modern English.

            • c1a5s1c
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              42 days ago

              That’s wild actually, love learning the history behind words. Did you know that very fun fact from the top of your head?

              • Pooptimist
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                2 days ago

                Then I got one for you!

                Sculptors in antique Rome could fix mistakes they made by mixing marble dust with wax. If a sculptor was especially gifted and made no mistakes that needed fixing, they would market their art as “sin cera”, which means “without wax”, which is where the word “sincere” comes from

              • @BillTongg
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                52 days ago

                No, not off the top of my head. But English is roughly half French/Latin and half German, with some Norse and other influences thrown in. Wer or were sound Germanic, so then a little Wikipedia help filled in the details.