Pro-Harris TikTok felt shielded in an algorithmic bubble — until election day

In the weeks directing up to the US pdwellntial election, Kacey Smith was experienceing confident. Smith, who helped Vice Pdwellnt Kamala Harris’ campaign, says she knew it would be a seal race between the Democratic nominee and Reaccessiblean Donald Trump. But as she scrolled TikTok, she consentd Harris would be victorious.

But Election Day approached, and she begined to sense red flags in that positivity. She recalls TikTok serving her enthusiasm for reefficient choice with videos encouraging “women’s rights over gas prices” — showing, counterfeitly, she thought, the choice was “either/or.” The rhetoric fit well inside her feed filled with strangers, but as a campaign strategy, it felt restricting and hazardous. “When I begined seeing that messaging carry out out,” Smith says, “I begined getting a little unbasic.” Her dreads were borne out: Harris lost the famous vote and Electoral College and conceded the election to Pdwellnt-elect Trump.

Filter bubbles enjoy TikTok’s recommfinishation algorithm are a standard point of worry among tech critics. The feeds can produce the amazeion of a bespoke truth, letting engagers shun leangs they discover unpleasant — enjoy the genuine people in Smith’s life who helped Trump. But while there are frequent grumblets that algorithmic feeds could serve engagers misdirectation or lull them into complacency, that’s not exactly what happened here. Voters enjoy Smith understood the facts and the odds. They fair underappraised how convincingly someleang enjoy TikTok’s feed could erect a world that didn’t quite exist — and in the wake of Harris’ fall shorture, they’re feeblenting its loss, too.

TikTok’s algorithm is hyperpersonalized, enjoy a TV station calibrated exactly to a engager’s brain. Its For You page serves satisfied based on what you’ve previously watched or scrolled away from, and shattering out of these recommfinishations into other circles of the app isn’t basic. It’s a phenomenon political activists must figure out how to alter to, says Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, pdwellnt of betterive youth voter organization NextGen America.

“It not only produces it difficulter for us to do our job, I leank it produces it difficulter for truthfulates to do their jobs. It produces it difficulter for news media to do their job, becaengage now you’re talking about having to advise a accessible that has so many contrastent sources of adviseation,” she says.

From the onset, the Harris campaign seemed to comprehfinish the power of these silos. On TikTok, where the Kamala HQ account has 5.7 million fancientrops, an all-Gen Z team of staffers produced video after video that are, at times, inconvertable to the unretagable person. If you saw a video stringing together clips of Harris saying leangs enjoy “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people” and “I have a Glock” with a tfinisher Aphex Tprosper song as the soundtrack, would you comprehfinish it as “hopecore”? The campaign bet that it didn’t reassociate matter becaengage the TikTok algorithm would carry it to people who did comprehfinish it. And at least to some extent, they were right.

Smith, enjoy other TikTok engagers, understands that the platcreate recommfinishs her satisfied based on what she watches, saves, comments on, or enjoys. When pro-Trump satisfied came apass her For You page, Smith would purposely not take part and sshow scroll away. 

“I don’t want my algorithm to leank that I’m a Trump helper, so I fair want to scroll up and disconsider it,” she says. 

In hindsight, Smith wonders if that was the right leang to do or if a fuse of contrastent types of political satisfied may have donaten her more insight into what the other side was saying, doing, and leanking. She enjoyns it to being a liberal or betterive who devours news from right-prosperg outlets enjoy Breitbart or Fox News — not becaengage you consent with the material, but becaengage it’s beneficial to understand what messages are resonating with other types of voters. 

The echo chamber effect isn’t restricted to politics: we don’t even reassociate understand what is famous on TikTok generassociate. Some of what we see may not be directd by our likeences at all. A alert by The Washington Post set up that male engagers — even liberal men — were more probable to be served Trump satisfied on TikTok than women. According to data from Pew Research Caccess, about 4 in 10 juvenileer people standardly get news from TikTok.

TikTok evidently isn’t the only filter bubble out there. Two years into Elon Musk’s acquire of Twitter, now called X, the platcreate has morphed into a right-prosperg echo chamber, with satisfied raiseed by Musk himself. While TikTok is sshow (as far as we understand) serving people leangs they enjoy to sell ads, the slant on X was a intentional electoral strategy that phelp off handsomely for Musk.

“I don’t leank we understand the brimming implications of X’s algorithm being rigged to feed us right prosperg misalertation,” Tzintzún Ramirez of NextGen America says. A recent Washington Post analysis set up that right-prosperg accounts have come to administer visibility and take partment on X. That integrates an algorithmic raise to Musk’s own posts, as the billionaire angles for sway with the incoming administration. 

Unenjoy somebody drinking from Musk’s algorithmic fire hose, a juvenileer person proset up in a pro-Harris TikTok bubble probable wasn’t being fed discriminatory “wonderful replacement” theory stories or counterfeit claims about election deception. Instead, they were probably seeing videos from some of the hundreds of satisfied creators the Democratic Party toiled with. Though the straightforward impact of swayrs on electoral politics is difficult to meaconfident, NextGen America’s own research recommends that swayr satisfied may turn out more first-time voters.

Alexis Williams is the type of swayr that Democrats were hoping could carry their message to fancientrops. For the last cut offal years, Williams has made satisfied about politics and social publishs and combineed the Democratic National Convention this year as a satisfied creator, sharing her mirrorions with 400,000 fancientrops apass TikTok and Instagram. Though Harris wasn’t a perfect truthfulate in Williams’ eyes, she felt Harris would prosper the pdwellncy in the days directing up to the election.

“As someone with a literal engineering degree, I should understand better than to be fooled,” Williams says. She was fed TikToks about a bomb deviceshell poll shoprosperg Harris ahead in Iowa; juvenileer women in Pennsylvania going to the polls in help of Harris; analysis about why it was actuassociate going to be a landslide. Professional polls stablely showed a dead heat between Trump and Harris — but watching TikTok after TikTok, it’s basic to shake off any unconfidentty. It was a world brimming of what’s frequently dubbed “hopium”: media uncomferventt to fuel what would, in retrospect, see enjoy unreasonable selectimism. 

TikTok and the Harris campaign didn’t react to The Verge’s seeks for comment.

For many voters on TikTok, the Kamala HQ satisfied fit in seamlessly with other videos. The campaign engaged the same trfinishing sound clips and music and a casual way of talking to seeers that seemed, at times, borderline ungrave. (The Trump campaign also engaged famous songs and post createats but didn’t seem as native to the platcreate — more enjoy a politician’s try at TikTok.) But Smith says that even as a Harris helper, there was a restrict to how much of that she could stomach. At a confident point, the trfinishs get elderly, the songs get overcarry outed, and the line between a political campaign and everyleang else on TikTok begins to get blurry. Kamala HQ, Smith says, begined to experience enjoy fair another brand.

Williams’ confidence began to shatter down on Election Day, as she walked to a watch party. “I understand what I’m seeing on the internet and everyleang, but I still had [something] in my heart that was enjoy, I don’t see us having another Donald Trump pdwellncy, but I also don’t see a world where a Bconciseage woman gets elected for pdwellnt right now,” she says. She begined to wonder whether that much had alterd in the eight years since the last female pdwellntial truthfulate. “You’re seeing all this stuff, and people are getting so excited, but this could be fair a mirage.”

Filter bubbles are not a new phenomenon, and voters have a expansive range of places to get hyperpartisan news apart from TikTok: blogs, talk radio, podcasts, TV. Whether on the right or the left, there’s a tfinishency to see around at what you see and presume it’s recontransientative. But the counterfeit sense of confidentty that TikTok conveys is perhaps even more strong. What we see on the platcreate is both unsootheably personal and incredibly global: a video talking about someleang that happened on our neighborhood block might be trailed up by someone apass the country voting for the same truthfulate for the same reasons. It donates an illusion that you are receiving a diverse assortment of satisfied and voices.

As social media algorithms have gotten more exact, our prosperdow into their inner toilings has gotten even minusculeer. This summer, Meta shut down CrowdTangle, a research tool engaged to track viral satisfied on Facebook. A accessible TikTok feature called Creative Caccess — which apexhibited publicizers to meaconfident trfinishing hashtags — was abruptly recut offeed by the company after alerters engaged it to alert on the Israel-Hamas war. It is difficulter than ever to comprehfinish what’s happening on social media, especiassociate outside of our bubbles.

“As technology gets more progressd and more convincing, our idea of a communal truth might genuinely become archaic,” Williams says. “This election has reassociate taught me that we are very much sucked into these worlds that we produce on our phone, when the genuine world is right in front us.”