Digital platforms are shaping the landscape of Australian political discourse. While significant attention is rightly paid to how platforms influence political discourse through content moderation and policies around misinformation and disinformation, they also shape political discourse through the development and deployment of algorithms in content recommender systems.

This research explores the effect of social media algorithms on political content promotion concerning the Voice referendum in Australia. We set up sock puppets (or ‘fake accounts’) on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) to observe the rate at which these accounts fell into ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ filter bubbles.

Key findings

• On TikTok: Two of four sock puppets fell into strong ‘No’ filter bubbles within 400 videos, one fell into a ‘Yes’ filter bubble within 250 videos, and one failed to fall into a filter bubble.
• On X: One of two sock puppets fell into a ‘No’ filter bubble after around 300 Xs (tweets) and the other into a ‘Yes’ filter bubble after around 200 Xs.
• The existence of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ filter bubbles, which can rapidly appear, suggests that platforms’ recommender systems could play a role in dividing Australian political discourse. 

Despite these findings, algorithms and content recommender systems remain largely invisible to Australian researchers, as platforms’ ‘transparency tools’ are being closed down, moved behind paywalls, or are only available to Europeans or Americans. Consideration must be given to ensuring that independent oversight of algorithms is possible for regulators and researchers.