Recommending the manosphere: How algorithms amplify antifeminist masculinities

The online world of boys and young men in the post-Andrew Tate moment is now saturated with masculinity influencers who take ideas, advice, talking points and ideologies from the “manosphere” – a loose online network of men’s interest communities known for its virulent misogyny, coordinated antifeminist campaigns and cases of extreme real-world violence. 

Whether it’s manipulative dating strategies, get-rich-quick schemes, or extreme discipline and fitness content, an entire ecosystem of masculinity influencers are now selling their version of how to be a “Real Man” by repackaging ideologies from subgroups of the manosphere – such as Incels, Pick-Up Artists, Red Pillers, and Men Going Their Own Way. 

Yet, a version of the manosphere has existed on the internet since its early use. So why has it only now become mainstream?  

The case of Andrew Tate 

Andrew Tate became a viral sensation in 2022 as a self-styled misogynist and anti-woke maverick who “tells it like it is”. His rise to infamy marked a key turning point in the information ecosystem of the manosphere. 

Clips of Tate’s most controversial takes, which include beating women into submission and questioning women’s right to vote, had flooded TikTok and other short-form video platforms. His content became inescapable for boys and young men, regardless of whether users actively engaged with it or not. 

Research shows that Tate’s content capitalises on the gendered anxieties of boys growing up in a world that still defines masculinity by dominance, control and economic success. His product is masculine empowerment; he produces and connects to a feeling of deficit, points the finger at an enemy (feminists, elites, weak men), and presents a simple solution – become unapologetically “manly”. 

And this had real-world effects. Teachers have come out across several countries reporting a surge in sexual harassment, misogyny and antifeminist talking points against women teachers, girl peers and LGBTQIA+ students in schools. 

Read more: We research online ‘misogynist radicalisation’. Here’s what parents of boys should know

Moreover, a recent study on gendered attitudes in the UK has shown that young men aged 16-29 were the cohort most likely to believe men have it harder than women, that feminism has done more harm than good, and that Tate raises important points about “real threats to male identity and gender roles”. 

However, the viral success of Tate cannot wholly be explained as a reaction to gender equality movements. Tate’s ideas are not new, nor is his formula for masculine empowerment. Manosphere thought leaders have been profiting from and recruiting members with this formula since the beginning of social media influencer culture in the early 2010s. 

What is new is the ubiquity of his content. From niche dedicated forums, websites and podcasts, the manosphere has now moved into the everyday social media feeds of boys and young men. 

So how did this happen? 

Understanding why the manosphere’s messaging has amplified takes us to a specific development in social media technology – TikTok’s recommender algorithm. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit and countries went into lockdowns, TikTok’s popularity skyrocketed. TikTok presented a new form of social media, one that enabled users to create interactive short-form audio-visual content, which it circulated using a highly effective recommender algorithm. 

Content recommender algorithms at their simplest are mathematical procedures used by computers to calculate what content should be recommended to users. Content recommendation systems can use a variety of different algorithmic models to determine the characteristics, context, interests and preferences of users. 

Social media recommender algorithms rely heavily on machine learning, which uses a feedback model that tracks and responds to the real-time behaviour of users on platforms. This makes recommender algorithms highly successful at learning and predicting the shifting moods, interests and desires of users. 

Where social media had previously networked users through a model of friends and followers, TikTok’s recommender algorithm began to connect users through shared attention and relatability to content. 

Other social media apps soon followed suit by releasing their own short-form video features and accompanying recommender algorithms, such as YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels. 

Recommender algorithms might seem innocuous, or even helpful, for connecting us to relevant content and people within an unfathomable volume of online information. However, the primary objective of content recommender algorithms is not actually to serve the most relevant content – it’s to optimise engagement. 

Recommender algorithms are designed to learn what keeps users engaged on social media platforms for as long as possible, as frequently as possible. They produce attention metrics based on a user’s engagement with certain content, alongside predictive analytics based on the user’s demographic information, characteristics and location.

This suggests two things: 

• That recommender algorithms prioritise content that generates the most engagement (ie. attention and interaction), which digital marketing analytics show tends to be emotionally charged, novel, or controversial content. 

• That users will be pushed towards certain content that algorithms calculate will likely engage someone “like you”. 

Where to from here? 

Recommender algorithms on short-form video platforms have changed the terms of social media and the business of influencing. 

Masculinity influencers are entrepreneurs in this attention economy, innovating genre, style, delivery, ideologies and branding to carve their niche and game the algorithmic infrastructure so that their content goes as far as fast as possible. This incentivises masculinity influencers in this unfettered market of attention to create increasingly extreme, emotionally volatile and polarising content.

Our environments are crucial for forming consensus about fairness, equality and justice, including what counts as legitimate and acceptable behaviour. 

Interrogating the logics of the things that mediate our information environments is critical in the struggle against gender-based violence. These digital spaces are shaped by the infrastructures with which we build them. And these infrastructures can be changed.