Elon Musk's X Potentially Favoring Right-Wing Content | Vanity Fair

X, the Elon Musk–owned social network formerly known as Twitter, disproportionately amplifies the messages of Republican influencers and politicians, according to two new investigations.

One analysis, published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, found that the platform appears to serve new users large amounts of right-leaning political content, even if they indicate no interest in politics. A second report, this one by The Washington Post, found that Republican politicians are now vastly more likely to go viral on X, and that over the past 15 months, many Republicans have seen huge follower gains compared with Democrats.

Both findings are likely to fuel ongoing speculation that X throttles left-leaning content, though there’s no direct evidence to suggest that’s true. Even before Musk acquired the platform, internal research found that Twitter tended to amplify right-leaning views. Still, these new analyses are striking and have alarmed some members of the Biden White House, according to the Post.

For its report, The Washington Post analyzed engagement data on more than 150,000 tweets, sent from the 50 most active Democratic and Republican congressional accounts. Of those tweets, 33 wracked up more than 20 million views since July 2023—almost all of them from Republicans, the paper found. That included one bizarre post from the House Judiciary Committee, which depicted an AI-generated Donald Trump cuddling a duck and a kitten. Seventeen of the 20 accounts with the largest follower gains also belonged to Republicans.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal used a different analytical method: It created 14 anonymous X accounts with apolitical interests, then logged and analyzed the posts the site promoted to them. Pro-Trump content appeared about twice as often as content favoring Kamala Harris, and 10 of the 14 most-promoted accounts leaned conservative.

Both outlets are quick to caution that these apparent imbalances could spring from different factors, including changes to the demographics of X users themselves. Millions of U.S. users reportedly left the site after Musk took over in 2022, eroding the platform’s policies against hate speech and harassment, which led to the reinstatement of thousands of previously banned accounts, including Trump’s. Republicans are now much more likely to say their views are welcome on the site, according to a March survey by the Pew Research Center.

At the same time, Musk has meddled in X’s recommendation algorithms before. Under his leadership, X has suppressed traffic to The New York Times, Facebook and other sites Musk disfavors, while boosting the reach of the billionaire’s own content.

Musk, who is now arguably the most powerful backer of Trump’s reelection campaign, has said that his personal views have no bearing on policies at X. “The platform is neutral,” he wrote in June, “but I will voice whatever opinions I have.”

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