Study finds TikTok algorithm favored Republican content in 2024 US elections
Researchers at New York University published a study in Nature finding that TikTok's algorithm systematically prioritized pro-Republican content in three US states during the 2024 presidential campaign. The study used 323 dummy accounts to track video recommendations over 27 weeks, finding that pro-Republican accounts saw about 11.5% more aligned content than pro-Democratic accounts.
What happened
Researchers at New York University's Abu Dhabi campus published a study in Nature on May 6, 2026, finding that TikTok's algorithm systematically prioritized pro-Republican content in three states during the 2024 US presidential campaign.
The study used 323 dummy accounts geollocated to New York, Texas, and Georgia. The accounts were conditioned to watch videos aligned with either the US Democratic or Republican parties, and researchers tracked recommended videos on their For You pages over 27 weeks, analyzing more than 280,000 videos.
Reported impact
Bots trained on pro-Republican content viewed about 11.5% more content that agreed with their views compared to pro-Democratic counterparts. Bots trained on pro-Democratic content were about 7.5% more likely to view pro-Republican content on their For You pages.
About 42% of US social media users say these platforms are important for political engagement. Voters aged 18 to 29, TikTok's primary demographic, shifted towards Donald Trump by 10 percentage points between the 2020 and 2024 elections.
Index analysis
The researchers found that the algorithm did not merely reinforce existing preferences but actively gave one political side more opposing content. Accounts trained on pro-Democratic content saw significantly more anti-Democratic material than pro-Republican accounts saw anti-Republican content.
Governance controls
TikTok stated that the study's artificial experiment with fake accounts does not reflect how people actually use TikTok, noting that users have access to more than a dozen tools to shape and control their feed content.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.