This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Do your social media accounts feed you content that reflects your core beliefs and guiding principles? Our new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the algorithms supplying your feeds may be prioritizing content that clashes with your values.
That's because the algorithms heavily weigh online posts that you reply to, and social media users tend to comment more often on content they take issue with than on content they agree with. Notably, our study of the X social media platform shows that although the X feed algorithm promotes content to both Democratic and Republican users that contradicts their values, it does so more extensively for Democrats. Social media platforms use powerful algorithms that select posts to display in your feed from a vast pool of possible content.
On X, for example, posts appear on your screen as "For You" pages. The algorithms predict the likelihood that you will engage with the content—click a "like" icon or add a comment. Then they use the accuracy of those predictions to tailor what they serve you next time.
Platforms use these interactions to learn their users' tendencies. But will the posts you receive reflect what you actually value? Some users care most about preserving traditions or keeping society safe.
Others care more about free expression or protecting the natural world. Most people care about all of those things to different extents. A feed aligned with a person's values would reflect those varying priorities.
Psychologists use well-established surveys to measure what a person values. To measure values expressed in the posts a platform selects for someone, we built a measurement tool that uses standard psychological classifications of human values. We then applied it to the feeds of 715 U.S.-based users on X.
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