MindVote: When AI Meets the Wild West of Social Media Opinion

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mao, Xutao, Tao, Ezra Xuanru, Wang, Leyao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Mao, Xutao
Tao, Ezra Xuanru
Wang, Leyao
author_facet Mao, Xutao
Tao, Ezra Xuanru
Wang, Leyao
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used as scalable tools for pilot testing, predicting public opinion distributions before deploying costly surveys. To serve as effective pilot testing tools, the performance of these LLMs is typically benchmarked against their ability to reproduce the outcomes of past structured surveys. This evaluation paradigm, however, is misaligned with the dynamic, context-rich social media environments where public opinion is increasingly formed and expressed. By design, surveys strip away the social, cultural, and temporal context that shapes public opinion, and LLM benchmarks built on this paradigm inherit these critical limitations. To bridge this gap, we introduce MindVote, the first benchmark for public opinion distribution prediction grounded in authentic social media discourse. MindVote is constructed from 3,918 naturalistic polls sourced from Reddit and Weibo, spanning 23 topics and enriched with detailed annotations for platform, topical, and temporal context. Using this benchmark, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of 15 LLMs. MindVote provides a robust, ecologically valid framework to move beyond survey-based evaluations and advance the development of more socially intelligent AI systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_14422
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MindVote: When AI Meets the Wild West of Social Media Opinion
Mao, Xutao
Tao, Ezra Xuanru
Wang, Leyao
Social and Information Networks
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used as scalable tools for pilot testing, predicting public opinion distributions before deploying costly surveys. To serve as effective pilot testing tools, the performance of these LLMs is typically benchmarked against their ability to reproduce the outcomes of past structured surveys. This evaluation paradigm, however, is misaligned with the dynamic, context-rich social media environments where public opinion is increasingly formed and expressed. By design, surveys strip away the social, cultural, and temporal context that shapes public opinion, and LLM benchmarks built on this paradigm inherit these critical limitations. To bridge this gap, we introduce MindVote, the first benchmark for public opinion distribution prediction grounded in authentic social media discourse. MindVote is constructed from 3,918 naturalistic polls sourced from Reddit and Weibo, spanning 23 topics and enriched with detailed annotations for platform, topical, and temporal context. Using this benchmark, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of 15 LLMs. MindVote provides a robust, ecologically valid framework to move beyond survey-based evaluations and advance the development of more socially intelligent AI systems.
title MindVote: When AI Meets the Wild West of Social Media Opinion
topic Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14422