Yoopya with The Conversation
On July 13, shortly after Donald Trump was targeted by an assassination attempt, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), tweeted to his more than 200 million followers:
I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.
Musk’s efforts to influence who wins next week’s US presidential election have continued. For example, over the past three months, he has donated more than US$100 million to a political action committee called America PAC that’s promoting Trump.
But our new research (currently available in preprint form) indicates Musk may be wielding influence in other more subtle ways as well. However, the platform’s increasing opacity to researchers makes this difficult to say for certain.
Shortly after Musk endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign, there was a statistically anomalous boost in engagement with his X account. Suddenly, his posts were getting much higher views, retweets and likes in comparison to other prominent political accounts on the platform.
This raises suspicions as to whether Musk has tweaked the platform’s algorithm to increase the reach of his posts in advance of the US presidential election. It also demonstrates the problems with how social media platforms like X are currently regulated around the world.
Not the first time
Musk has history when it comes to tweaking X’s algorithms so his own content reaches more people.
Last year, he reportedly mobilised a team of around 80 engineers to algorithmically boost his posts. This came after his tweet supporting the Philadelphia Eagles during the Super Bowl was outperformed by a similar one from President Joe Biden. Musk seemed to confirm this happened, posting a picture depicting one woman labelled “Elon’s tweets” forcibly bottle feeding another woman labelled “Twitter”.
To see whether Musk has done this again in the leadup to the US election, we compared Musk’s engagement metrics – such as the number of views, retweets and likes – with a set of other prominent political accounts on the social media platform. The data spans the period from January 1 2024 to October 25 2024.
Other political accounts that served as a basis of comparison include those of right-wing commentators Jack Posobiec, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. Our study also examined accounts at the other end of the political spectrum, including those of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, US Senator Bernie Sanders and Vice-President Kamala Harris.
A sudden and significant increase
Since July, engagement with Musk’s X account has seen a sudden and significant increase.
The view counts for his posts increased by 138%, retweets by 238%, and likes by 186%.
In contrast, other prominent political accounts on X saw more moderate increases: 57% in view counts, 152% in retweets, and 130% in likes.
This suggests that while engagement went up for all accounts after July, Musk’s metrics saw a particularly large boost, particularly in retweets and likes.
The research further found that since July, other conservative and right-wing X accounts have performed better in terms of visibility of posts compared to progressive and left-wing accounts.
The Conversation sought comment from X about the research, but did not receive a reply before deadline.
Without backstage access to the workings of the company, it is impossible to know for sure whether changes to its curation system are boosting its owner’s posts. The platform has limited the access it provides to researchers since Musk took over. This means there are restrictions on the amount of data we were able to collect for this study.
However, the Washington Post recently found that tweets from Republicans are far more likely to go viral, receiving billions more views than those from Democrats. Similarly, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that new users to the platform “are being blanketed with political content” that disproportionately favours Trump.
Since Musk’s purchase of the platform, it has become more congenial to figures on the right, including people who were previously banned for spreading harmful and false information.
The myth of neutrality
The findings raise the question of the extent to which Musk’s influential social media platform is reinforcing its owner’s political agenda.
Musk, whose businesses have extensive government contracts, has made a public and financial spectacle of his unabashed support of Trump. The billionaire tech tycoon is reportedly Trump’s second-biggest financial donor. He also promoted Trump in a glitchy live interview on X and authored a stream of tweets promoting Trump’s campaign.
Musk is also handing out $1 million a day to selected registered voters. This plan (which has met with questions over its legality) apparently aims to boost voter registration among sympathisers in swing states.
Musk’s actions have torpedoed the fantasy that social media platforms such as X are neutral. Given he has previously tweaked X’s algorithm to amplify the reach of his posts, it would be surprising if he were not tilting the platform in favour of Trump, whom he believes is “the path to prosperity”.
For too long, social media platforms have enjoyed immunity for the information they selectively inject into users’ feeds. It’s time for governments to reconsider their approach to regulating the oligopolistic power over our information environment wielded by a handful of tech billionaires.
Authors:
Timothy Graham | Associate Professor in Digital Media, Queensland University of Technology
Mark Andrejevic | Professor, School of Media, Film, and Journalism, Monash University, Monash University