Stanford Researchers Show A Simple Feed Tweak On X Can Reduce Political Hostility

Stanford University researchers may have hit on something surprisingly effective: a small change in how posts appear on X (formerly Twitter) can make people less hostile toward the other side of the political divide. And the twist is that nothing is censored. Nothing is deleted. The posts are simply pushed a little lower in the feed.

The study, run during the heated 2024 US election season, used a browser-based tool that sat on top of X’s existing algorithm. Around 1,200 volunteers installed it and continued using X as usual for ten days. The tool scanned their timelines for posts that contained extreme rhetoric, partisan hostility, or anti-democratic sentiments. Instead of blocking them, it quietly shifted those posts further down the feed so they didn’t appear front and centre.

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At the conclusion of the experiment, both liberal and conservative participants reported significantly warmer attitudes toward people on opposing political sides—significantly more so than participants in the control group, who witnessed unchanging levels of high-visibility political conflict on social media feeds.

The key insight is simple: posts at the top of your feed determine your emotional baseline. When content that triggers emotions no longer hits first, temperatures typically decrease, and posts can still be seen by scrolling—they just lose some of their power due to being directly in your face.

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Researchers emphasise that this was done without X's consent and did not change or hide content; only its ranking changed. They further point out that their results stemmed from one specific moment: ten days in an intense election cycle—with limited user participation—so this study did not test misinformation effects, nor establish whether such strategies work on other platforms or during more subdued political periods.

Still, the takeaway is striking. A small, non-censoring tweak to what people see first may be enough to cool down political hostility online—at least for a while.