There is a huge industry around political communications, which for some time now has been intensely focused on social media. You throw enough money at these platforms in the right way, and your message comes out louder.

Lots gets done quietly, often outside of formal campaigns by aligned actors.

I think a big part of 24, terrible Democrat candidates aside, was the large quantities of very tech-savvy money flowing into Republican campaigns at the national and state levels.

All this stuff can be and is bought.

Scrolled homepage yesterday there is "pastor" raging on live stream, which is actor being passed as real. And Trump kissing a man's belly in the white house...

To much fake rage bait, and rage validation content

During the 2024 election people were banned from all major sub reddits for posting pro-trump/anti-kamala content, even democrats. Why would they go to tiktok instead? Mystery

Compared with reddit and yt shorts, tiktok algorithm seems way more healthy and organic

In short, anti democratic content was, on average, more entertaining or emotion provoking.

That doesn't have to hold a deeper meaning on the value of any particular political viewpoint, or require tiktok's thumb on the scales of the algorithm to explain things. I'm not even saying TikTok didn't/doesn't do such things, but that type of interference isn't required to explain this trend.