TikTok: Filter Bubble Boost Donald Trump Algorithm and How Social Media Can Help Candidates Evaluate the Israel-Hamas War
Technology may make our idea of a communal reality obsolete. “This election has really taught me that we are very much sucked into these worlds that we create on our phone, when the real world is right in front us.”
The window into the inner workings of social media has gotten even smaller. This summer, Meta shut down CrowdTangle, a research tool used to track viral content on Facebook. A public TikTok feature called Creative Center — which allowed advertisers to measure trending hashtags — was abruptly restricted by the company after reporters used it to report on the Israel-Hamas war. It is harder than ever to understand what’s happening on social media, especially outside of our bubbles.
Filter bubbles are not a new phenomenon, and voters have a wide range of places to get hyperpartisan news apart from TikTok: blogs, talk radio, podcasts, TV. On the right or the left, there is a tendency to look around and think what you see is representative. The false sense of certainty that TikTok can bring is even more powerful. What we see on the platform is both uncomfortably personal and incredibly global: a video talking about something that happened on our neighborhood block might be followed up by someone across the country voting for the same candidate for the same reasons. It gives an illusion that you are receiving a diverse assortment of content and voices.
Source: Pro-Harris TikTok felt safe in an algorithmic bubble — until election day
What did you learn about Donald Trump and his campaign? Alexandra Williams had a tough time surviving a campaign that was never going to happen
Williams began to lose confidence as she walked to a watch party on Election Day. “I know what I’m seeing on the internet and everything, but I still had [something] in my heart that was like, I don’t see us having another Donald Trump presidency, but I also don’t see a world where a Black woman gets elected for president right now,” she says. She started to wonder whether that much had changed in the eight years since the last female presidential candidate. “You’re seeing all this stuff, and people are getting so excited, but this could be just a mirage.”
Many voters use the Kamala HQ content to watch other videos on TikTok. The campaign used the same trending sound clips and music and a casual way of talking to viewers that seemed, at times, borderline unserious. (The Trump campaign also used popular songs and post formats but didn’t seem as native to the platform — more like a politician’s attempt at TikTok.) Smith said there was a limit to how much she could stomach as a Harris supporter. At some point, the trends get old, the songs get overplay, and the line between a political campaign and TikTok starts to get blurry. Smith says that the brand started to feel like just another one.
“As someone with a literal engineering degree, I should know better than to be fooled,” Williams says. She was fed information about Harris being ahead in Iowa despite a bombshell poll showing that he was going to lose the election. Professional polls consistently showed a dead heat between Trump and Harris — but watching TikTok after TikTok, it’s easy to shake off any uncertainty. It was a world full of what’s frequently dubbed “hopium”: media meant to fuel what would, in retrospect, look like unreasonable optimism.
Democrats hoped that aninfluencer likeAlexis Williams would carry their message to their followers. In the last few years, Williams has made content about politics and social issues and she attended the Democratic National Convention this year as a content creator, sharing her reflections with 400,000 followers. Williams felt that Harris was going to win the presidency in the days leading up to the election.
A young person deep in a pro-Harris TikTok bubble is not likely to be getting racist stories or false claims about election fraud. They might have seen content from the Democrats, as the party worked with hundreds of creators. Though the direct impact of influencers on electoral politics is difficult to measure, NextGen America’s own research suggests that influencer content may turn out more first-time voters.
Tzintzn Ramirez of NextGen America thinks that we don’t know the full implications of X’s algorithm being rigged to feed right wing propaganda. A Washington Post analysis shows that right-wing accounts have dominated visibility and engagement on X. Musk is the billionaire that has influence with the incoming administration.
In hindsight, Smith wonders if that was the right thing to do or if a mix of different types of political content may have given her more insight into what the other side was saying, doing, and thinking. She thinks of being a liberal or progressive if you consume news from the right-wing media outlets, like Fox News, because it is helpful to know what other types of voters are thinking.
Smith, like other TikTok users, knows that the platform recommends her content based on what she watches, saves, comments on, or likes. Smith did not engage when pro- Trump information came across her For You page.
Source: Pro-Harris TikTok felt safe in an algorithmic bubble — until election day
The Internet of Things Is Not Your Average Politics News Media: A Brief Look at the First Two Years of Donald Trump’s Presidency
It makes it harder for candidates to do their jobs and that’s something we can’t live with. She says that it makes it hard for news media to do their job because they are having to inform a public who has so many different sources.
Kacey Smith felt hopeful in the weeks leading up to the election. Smith, who supported Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, says she knew it would be a close race between the Democratic nominee and Republican Donald Trump. But as she scrolled TikTok, she believed Harris would be victorious.
There are dozens more: Even before the election, former “Vlog Squad” member Corinna Kopf endorsed Trump. Mika Lafuente posted a video of herself endorsing Trump along with several dance videos on the video sharing site TikTok.
Some people have criticized Scout West for liking posts from a pro-Trump woman, Jessica Reed Kraus, who was the author of House Inhabit. Kraus was on the campaign trail with Robert Kennedy Jr. or the Trump campaign.
Some of the women on my TikTok For You page are angry that some of their favorite lifestyle streamers have either announced their support of Trump or not done so at all. They are sharing lists of creators that are Trumpy and are posting videos encouraging others to block them as part of a new block out movement.
It’s not like your average politics newsletter. Makena Kelly and the WIRED Politics team help you make sense of how the internet is shaping our political reality.
Trump’s successful influencer and pod bro campaign spoke to young men, and created a new style of fandom for him online. It seems like Trump 2.0 has a new look as well.
Berman suggests that one should look to the return of Ralph Lauren. Or the aestheticization of Catholicism and the farm-to-table-to-Instagram-grid “tradwife.” These trends creeped out from the more fringe parts of the internet during the first Trump administration, and have since been legitimized and become more dominant in contemporary culture.
Over the past few days, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this TikTok I watched over the weekend. In it, fashion celebrity Elysia Berman said that the foundations of a second Trump presidency were laid years ago due to the old money trends dominating the lifestyle industry.