Sky News Daily

Doom scrolling: How Elon Musk is boosting the British right

11 snips
Nov 6, 2025
In this discussion, Tom Cheshire, a Data and Forensics correspondent, and Kaitlin Tosh, a Digital Investigations journalist, dive into how X's algorithm may be fostering a right-wing shift among users. They explore the implications of their investigation, highlighting that 62% of content served leans right, often featuring extreme language. The duo explains their innovative testing methods using AI on tweets and raises questions about algorithmic transparency, free speech, and the societal impacts of such biases in information dissemination.
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INSIGHT

Musk's Ownership Linked To Platform Shift

  • Elon Musk's ownership and actions have coincided with a perceived rightward shift on X and reinstatement of banned accounts.
  • Sky News set out to test whether the algorithm itself amplifies right-wing content beyond those visible changes.
INSIGHT

For You Tab Shapes Political Exposure

  • Sky News probed whether X's recommendation algorithm is neutral or pushing a political viewpoint.
  • The team focused on the For You tab because it's the algorithmically curated feed that shapes most users' experience.
ADVICE

Test Algorithms With Controlled Accounts

  • To investigate an opaque algorithm, create controlled new accounts with defined profiles and collect their feeds.
  • Use systematic data pulls over time to build a dataset for analysis.
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