Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s social media posts have seen a ‘sudden spike’ since July, new research finds

On July 13, shortly after Donald Trump was assassinated, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Company X (formerly Twitter), tweeted to its more than 200 million subscribers:

I fully support President Trump and hope for his speedy recovery.

Musk’s efforts to influence who wins next week’s US presidential election continue. For example, in the last three months he has donated more than 100 million US dollars to a political action committee called America PAC, which promotes Trump.

But our new research (currently available in preprint form) indicates that Musk may be influencing in other, more subtle ways. However, the platform’s increasing opacity to researchers makes it difficult to say for sure.

Shortly after Musk endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign, there was a statistically anomalous increase in activity on his account X. Suddenly, his posts received significantly more views, retweets, and likes compared to other prominent political accounts on the platform.

This raises suspicions about whether Musk changed the platform’s algorithm to increase the reach of his posts ahead of the US presidential election. It also demonstrates the problems with the way social media platforms like X are currently regulated around the world.

Not the first time

Musk has experience tweaking X’s algorithms to ensure his own content reaches more people.

Last year, he has reportedly mobilized a team of about 80 engineers who algorithmically improve his posts. This comes after his tweet supporting the Philadelphia Eagles during the Super Bowl was surpassed by a similar tweet from President Joe Biden. Musk seemed to confirm that this happened: image placement an image of one woman with the caption “Elon Tweets” force-feeding a bottle to another woman with the caption “Twitter.”

To see if Musk did it again in the run-up to the US election, we compared Musk’s engagement metrics – such as views, retweets and likes – with a set of other prominent political accounts on the social media platform. Data covers the period from January 1, 2024 to October 25, 2024.

Other political views that served as a basis for comparison include those of right-wing commentators Jack Posobiec, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. Our research also examined statements from the other end of the political spectrum, including statements from US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. , US Senator Bernie Sanders and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Sudden and significant increase

Since July, engagement with Musk X’s account has increased dramatically.

The number of views on his posts increased by 138%, the number of retweets by 238%, and the number of likes by 186%.

In contrast, other prominent political accounts on X saw more moderate growth, with 57% views, 152% retweets, and 130% likes.

This suggests that while all accounts’ engagement increased after July, Musk’s numbers increased significantly, especially in retweets and likes.

The study also found that since July, other conservative and right-wing X accounts performed better in terms of post visibility compared to progressive and left-wing accounts.

The Conversation asked X for comment on the study but did not receive a response by deadline.

Without behind-the-scenes access to a company’s operations, it’s impossible to know for sure whether changes to its oversight system are helping its owner’s position grow. Since Musk took power, the platform has limited the access it provides to researchers. This means that there are limitations to the amount of data we were able to collect for this study.

However, The Washington Post recently discovered that Republican tweets are much more likely to go viral and receive billions more views than Democratic tweets. Likewise, Wall Street Journal investigation found that new users of the platform are being “flooded with political content” that disproportionately favors Trump.

Since Musk’s purchase of the platform, it has become more welcoming to right-wing figures, including people who were previously banned for spreading harmful and false information.

The myth of neutrality

The findings raise questions about the extent to which Musk’s influential social media platform amplifies its owner’s political agenda.

Musk, whose businesses have extensive government contracts, has turned his unabashed support of Trump into a public and financial spectacle. The billionaire tech mogul is reportedly a friend of Trump. second largest financial donor. He also promoted Trump in glitchy interview live on X and wrote a series of tweets promoting Trump’s campaign.

Musk is also giving away $1 million a day to select registered voters. This plan (which met with questions about its legality) is apparently aimed at boosting voter registration among partisans in swing states.

Musk’s actions shattered the idea that social networks like X are neutral. Given that he has previously modified Algorithm X to expand the reach of his posts, it would be surprising if he did not tilt the platform in favor of Trump, who he believes “path to prosperity“

For too long, social media platforms have enjoyed immunity from the information they selectively feed into users’ feeds. It’s time for governments to rethink their approach to regulating the oligopolistic power over our information environment that a handful of tech billionaires wield.