But Musk’s most unique contribution to President Trump’s quest for the White House is something no political candidate or campaign in history has had at their disposal: his tweets.
The billionaire Tesla CEO turned his personal feed into a nonstop pro-Trump megaphone, sharing MAGA talking points to his roughly 203 million followers on X. That’s an impressive level of reach even by influencer standards (Taylor Swift has 95 million X followers, and the much larger Instagram has 283 million).
Because the X Platform is owned and operated by Musk, the tech mogul’s political musings and commentary (sometimes more than 20 times a day) are effectively a built-in feature of the service. . For many users, Musk’s tweets feel like an inevitability, popping up regardless of whether the person knows or cares about Musk, his company, politics, or even business in general. It seems that it will be done.
They don’t imagine it.
Fortune conducted a multi-day experiment to measure how prevalent Musk really is on social media platforms. In about 90% of Fortune’s X sessions, across a dozen different test accounts, Musk’s posts appeared on their timelines at least once, and usually more frequently.
None of the X accounts that Fortune created for the experiment followed Musk or actively engaged with his content. Yet, within two sessions, all 12 test accounts were exposed to Musk’s tweets in the “For You” feed powered by X’s algorithm.
The results appear to confirm reports that Musk continues to put his thumb on the scale of algorithms to amplify his tweets, and show how the world’s richest man is controlling the popular communication platform. We’re adding important new details to show you what we’ve sourced and retrofitted into the new platform. A personal tool for influencing public opinion. A spokesperson for Company X did not respond to email or text messages seeking comment.
Some of Musk’s tweets that appeared on Fortune’s test account feed incorrectly said that “Democrats imported tons of illegal aliens into battleground states” to create a “one-party, deep-blue socialist state.” There were also tweets claiming this. There were several posts by Musk promoting Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, as well as a recent rally in New York where Musk spoke. Musk shared several anti-Harris ads, including one funded by Musk’s pro-Trump political action committee that used misogynistic and vulgar language to refer to the vice president. did.
Political content made up a significant portion (83% in one case) of the tweets that appeared in test accounts’ feeds, whether created by Musk or other users.
“I’m not interested in Elon Musk” (an option that users could once select for all celebrities on Twitter, but now appears to only be available for Musk and a few other celebrities) Clicking didn’t kick Musk out of my feed. In fact, Musk’s posts more than doubled after one Fortune test account clicked on an option declaring indifference to the tech billionaire.
Force feeding of musk content
Two former Twitter employees say the algorithm’s “For You” feed organically pulls so much content from one person or topic even though Musk was the most followed person on the platform. In fact, it is said that the possibility that the government has incorporated the information into the government is “impossible.” The algorithm is designed to be “as neutral as possible” and will be based on the user’s selected interests and location, unless the user engages with enough content to direct the recommendation algorithm to broader content. designed to bring out content. people explained.
Another former employee said there was almost certainly a “manual override” that injected Musk and political content into the “For You” recommendation algorithm to put the same content in front of users in bulk. He pointed out that there was. User interests.
Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and renamed it X, has embarked on a radical overhaul of the service, laying off thousands of employees, closing offices and banning A large number of extremist accounts were revived. He said the changes, including the near-elimination of content moderation teams that work to keep offensive posts out of user feeds, would add “free speech” to the platform, which he says has been controlled by activist employees, governments and advertisers. He said it was to bring about it.
In 2023, Musk reportedly fired an engineer who told him that users were seeing fewer views of his tweets. A team of 80 people was tasked with getting to the bottom of the problem and fixing it, The Verge reported. The result was apparently a code change to prevent Musk’s tweets from being flagged by filters that categorize tweets according to the interests of the service’s various users.
It’s difficult to quantify the impact that Musk’s recent barrage of political tweets has had on voters. Social media is a powerful tool that advertisers spend a lot of money on to capture consumer mindshare.
According to media reports, Musk’s pro-Trump America Pac spent millions of dollars on advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the months leading up to the election, with Only 4% of ads were advertised. While some may interpret this as a sign of weakness in the X platform, it simply suggests that Musk’s pack doesn’t need to spend money on the platform given its ability to reach users for free. Maybe.
Steady increase in musk content
To conduct the experiment, Fortune created 12 test accounts of users with profiles ranging from fashion and beauty to business and finance and sports. Over five consecutive days in late October, Fortune conducted individual sessions on X for each of 12 accounts.
Each account session lasted 5 minutes and included approximately 60–100 posts each time. In two-thirds of total sessions, Musk was one of the first three posts to appear at the top of users’ feeds, and Billionaire was the most commonly seen personal account across all feeds. .
For 8 of the 12 accounts, Musk’s posts did not appear on the first day of use, but posts appeared every day thereafter and increased in frequency, despite no interaction with Musk’s content. That’s what Fortune magazine found out.
Accounts with specific interests such as travel, career, and science were served 2 posts by Musk in one session, but 22 posts by Musk in subsequent sessions. I did. Regardless of what topic they chose to be interested in, almost all accounts went through a similar process, growing from just a few masked posts to many, even dozens.
Mr. Musk has tweeted about a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Tesla and various other businesses, but has been dominated by Republican comments. Musk’s recent tweets on Fortune’s test account highlight the lack of voter ID requirements, even though most states require ID to vote in person. A meme was posted criticizing the. And another meme about inflation uses a photo of Hunter Biden to claim that inflation is higher than President Joe Biden claims.
By all accounts, politics was clearly the dominant theme each day, overwhelmingly consistent with Musk’s own political views. Between 19% and 83% of the various accounts’ “For You” feeds consisted of political content, even though 10 out of 12 accounts did not engage with such content. Of that political content, 55% to 82% were clearly pro-Trump or clearly anti-Harris, according to a Fortune magazine analysis. Of the roughly 4,500 X posts Fortune recorded, only 46 were explicitly pro-Harris.
Will the political content of X diminish after the election? That’s possible, but it seems unlikely that Mr. Musk will stop using X to further his personal interests.
And very few people, inside or outside the company, can stop it.
“If you’re ready to be fired, that’s when you say no,” said a current X employee about Musk’s frequent and varied demands. This billionaire’s creed for his employees (including those at Company X) is: Important, Excellent, and Loyal.
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