Twitter algorithms boost right-wing news, commentary

Twitter's algorithms disproportionately boosted right-wing news and commentary content, the company says.

Analysing politicians’ tweets and political content from Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the UK and US from April 1 to August 2020, Twitter found that right-wing content was more amplified algorithmically relative to a reverse-chronological timeline in every country, other than Germany.

Twitter director of software engineering Rumman Chowdhury and machine learning researcher Luca Belli admitted it is unclear why its algorithms behaved this way. 

'Further root cause analysis', they say, 'is required in order to determine what, if any, changes are required to reduce adverse impacts by [Twitter's] Home timeline algorithm'.