How Elon Musk, an erstwhile ‘free speech absolutist,’ became Trump’s chief propagandist
The top political accounts on X have seen their audiences crumble in the months before the election, a signal of the platform’s diminishing influence and usefulness to political discourse under billionaire owner Elon Musk, a Washington Post analysis found.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle have struggled to win the attention they once enjoyed on the platform formerly known as Twitter, according to The Post’s review of months of data for the 100 top-tweeting congressional accounts, including senators, representatives and committees, equal parts Democrat and Republican.
But some of their tweets are still going mega-viral — virtually all of them from Republicans, the analysis shows. The Republicans have also seen huge spikes in follower counts over the Democrats, and their tweets have collectively received billions more views.
X has seen a dramatic exodus of users since Musk took over in 2022, according to independent analysts such as Edison Research, which said in March that X’s usage in the United States had dropped 30 percent since last year. The investment firm Fidelity this month estimated that X’s value has plunged by about 80 percent since Musk’s takeover.
But the viewers that have stayed on X now largely see posts that skew toward the political bent of Musk himself, an avid booster of former president Donald Trump who has jumped onstage with him at rallies, donated $118 million toward his bid for a second term and launched a daily $1 million giveaway for registered voters in swing states. Musk, the world’s richest man, paid $44 billion to buy X and has since become its biggest user, with 200 million followers.
It’s almost impossible to say whether X is explicitly suppressing Democrats, as some liberals have speculated: The Post’s analysis turned up no evidence of direct manipulation. The shift in attention could reflect changing attitudes among users who have stuck around, given that many left-wing users have said they left the platform of their own accord, annoyed by Musk’s antics and X’s redrawn rules. [Continue reading…]
The Wall Street Journal reports:
New X users with interests in topics such as crafts, sports and cooking are being blanketed with political content and fed a steady diet of posts that lean toward Donald Trump and that sow doubt about the integrity of the Nov. 5 election, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. [Continue reading…]