Social media completes its shift to the right: ‘TikTok is consequential’

TikTok is turning right-wing. The fastest-growing social network in the world and the most popular among young people is set to operate in the U.S. under a company independent of its Chinese parent company, with a board of directors controlled by the White House, which has already expressed its preferences.

“A man named Lachlan is involved,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News. Lachlan and his father Rupert Murdoch are “probably going to be in the group,” Trump told the network, which is one of the many controlled by the Murdoch family. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle and a personal friend of the president, will also be involved.

TikTok is the latest major social network to take this conservative turn. Facebook and Instagram did so shortly after Trump won the election, when their owner, Mark Zuckerberg, became a supporter of the MAGA movement. Two years earlier, Elon Musk turned Twitter into X, a platform whose algorithm gives special visibility to posts that are racist, misleading, or support far-right candidates from around the world.

“I want you all to put all the pieces together, because what this effectively means is that every mass social media platform in the United States has been taken over by the right wing.” Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez issued this warning in January, after TikTok posted a message thanking the newly inaugurated President Trump for preventing the platform from being shut down in the U.S. by granting an extension to resolve its sale. The Big Tech establishment has made no secret of its close ties to the Republican Party, attending dinners and kowtowing at events at the White House.

This alignment has also been formalized through actions. Perhaps the most significant occurred in January, just days before Trump returned to power: Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced the end of its third-party fact-checking program, the already porous barrier that sought to keep inappropriate and hate-inciting content in check — content such as that shared by Trump himself, whose account was suspended following the Capitol riot. Meta replaced that mechanism with a community notes system similar to the one previously adopted by X, a social network that has amplified far-right messaging. Community notes are comments made and voted on by users themselves, replacing the thousands of moderators and fact-checkers who were fired by X and Meta.

Deciding what can or cannot be shared on social media is crucial and depends on each company. “The major digital platforms are no longer just technology companies: they are political actors with a clear bias, an extension of state power,” says Carmela Ríos, an expert on social media and disinformation. “The fact that they are now largely controlled by ultra-conservatives means that these sectors have understood that social media and its impressive capacity to redefine communication and global conversation have been and continue to be indispensable tools in their conquest of power.”

Recently, in New York, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of influencers that social media was a “weapon” and that the control of TikTok could be “consequential.” On the other side, many voices criticize the Biden administration for having effectively handed TikTok to the right by legislating against its Chinese control.

For example, some studies highlight the importance of TikTok in the consolidation and integration of far-right parties in Finland and Sweden. As this platform is particularly popular among young people, it serves as a conduit for ideas and messages to a segment of the population largely detached from traditional media. In Spain, the far-right party Vox has around 750,000 followers on TikTok — more than double the combined following of the Socialist Party (150,000), the left-wing Sumar (85,000), and the mainstream conservative Popular Party (70,000).

Social media’s love affair with far-right content goes beyond simply shaping what people talk about. “Algorithms historically promote what generates the most attention, because that generates more revenue through advertising sales. Far-right messages generate a lot of interactions, both for and against, and that causes algorithms to reinforce and promote certain content more,” explains Cecilia Rikap, professor of economics at University College London and research director of the institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at the center.

Since the platforms themselves, through the design of their algorithms, decide which content is acceptable or not, the current state of these platforms shows that “large technology companies and their founders combine the traditional profit motive with the pursuit of social and political control,” concludes Rikap.

Ekaitz Cancela, author of Utopías digitales, Imaginar el fin del capitalismo (Digital Utopias, Imagining the End of Capitalism), agrees: “By promoting hatred against women, immigrants, and the queer population, by appealing to citizens’ most visceral passions, Silicon Valley’s business model is directly related to Trump’s ability to mobilize his voters,” explains the researcher in the Technopolitics group at the CNSC/IN3 of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Effect on users

For Ríos, the impact of the rightward shift of social media on its users is profound. “Speech that was previously marginal becomes normalized, polarization is amplified, and a sense of distrust toward the press, institutions, and science is fueled. It creates a landscape where misinformation circulates more freely and becomes part of the general conversation. It’s a shift that turns social media into ideological trenches and weakens the shared space for conversation that democratic societies require.”

There is evidence that right-wing users are more likely to consume misinformation. A macro-study conducted with data from millions of Facebook users confirmed in 2023 that news circulating on the platform has a clear conservative bias — and that the users who overwhelmingly consume information labeled as false are those who identify as right-wing.

Tech companies have always cultivated close ties to political power, regardless of who the president is. “But what we’re seeing now isn’t just opportunism: it’s also a cultural alignment,” says Ríos. “Some of the owners and executives share the Trumpist vision of freedom without rules and a market without checks and balances. The alignment isn’t just tactical, it’s also ideological.”

The fact that the U.S. government is taking control of the most successful social network of recent times can be read in many ways. “The TikTok case tells us that Trump will continue to invoke national security to interfere and control citizens’ public lives, laying the groundwork for a shift toward authoritarianism and political surveillance of content, which will put an end to any semblance of a free internet,” says Cancela.

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