Elon Musk spent Election Day at X Admiring men, Expanding anti-immigrant conspiracyAnd Accusations of voter fraud against Democrats. It was all pretty on-brand for the billionaire, who has become one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters and a one-man disinformation machine. When it became clear Wednesday morning that Trump would win, Musk told his followers: “You are the media now.”
A statement like that would have been laughable even a month ago, when speculation showed that X, formerly of Twitter, The price had fallen by almost 80 percent Since Musk bought the platform in 2022 for $44 billion. Until its transformation into X, the platform was considered a once-vibrant place on the Internet that Mask is entirely destruction. But after the musk spent at least $119 million To elect Trump and make it his platform on a MAGA megaphone — and then Trump won — the real value of social media sites began to take shape.
From the day he bought Twitter, Musk the oath To centralize free speech for the platform’s future. He instilled trust in the company and safety personnel by setting a precedent Other social media companies follow. Since then, however, Musk has been willing to rule autocratically Indicate how X will work in their country. In the US, more free speech in X means more misinformation and a Embrace right-wing politics.
X is certainly not the largest social media platform, but as other major platforms Continue to shy away from policing content And with Trump back in the White House, X is certainly looking more imposing than last week.
You may not like this. Since Buy the platform In 2022, Musk helped turn X into one Central to election misinformation. With 203 million followers, Musk’s X has the largest reach of the platform The most prominent push of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda. X at Musk’s request last year The site’s algorithm has been changed To keep his posts in more people’s feeds – the posts are incremental He urged the people not to trust the election results. unprofitable Center for Preventing Digital Hate Speculation that Musk’s misleading post about the election had been seen More than 2 billion times this year
Gone are the warning labels Twitter once used to flag false or misleading information. Musk replaced that system with a crowd-sourced fact-checking program called Community Notes. He called it “the best source of truth on the Internet”. Unfortunately, the new system doesn’t work very well.
So if your feed seems like it’s full of especially right-wing voices and conspiracy theories, that’s probably because it is. It’s not exactly a concerted effort by Musk’s lieutenants to push your views to the right. It’s just how X is designed these days.
It’s too early to tell how big a role X played in Trump’s reelection. We also don’t know what, if anything, Musk would do differently with a platform like his Eyes Some kind of introduction In the new administration. You can count on questioning everything you see on social media, though.
“The problem is going to get worse because right now there are no safeguards in place,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “All the trends are going in the wrong direction.”
In fact, thanks to the indifference of social media platforms and the rise of AILying on the internet was never easy. And if you’re into X, that’s part of the appeal.
Right X will continue to rule
Until the election, opinion on X’s fate was dire. was a lot of Report Danger of selective misinformation on the platform or Kasturi broke his promise About what X will do now. Bloomberg columnist Dave Lee argued that the platform was just failUsers and losing relevance. That seems unlikely now.
despite Rumors of his deathX is still pretty big. X told advertisers as recently as September that it has 570 million monthly active usersDwarfs are like right-wing platforms The truth is social And RumbleIt has thousands of users. It is much bigger than the platform Like Mastodon and Blue SkyWhich progressives ran away with after Musk bought Twitter.
Meanwhile, Meta recently said that its Twitter-replacement platform, Thread, There are 275 million monthly active users. A big difference between the two platforms? meta limit The amount of political content you see in threads. It seems like people are either staying on X or flocking to it for unvarnished politics news.
Political news on Twitter Used to be marginalWhere celebrities were the main draw. celebrities has leftAnd now X is the most popular major social media platform for keeping up with politics, according to one Pew Survey Published in June. There have also been major party changes. Democrats have historically dominated political discussion on the platform, but X has become Right-wing voices dominate Just in the last few years. Republicans’ posts are more likely to go viral on X, and once-popular Democrat accounts have seen their audiences fragment, according to A recent investigation by the Washington Post.
Republicans also changed their minds about the platform’s impact on democracy. Once upon a time there was Twitter framed As a platform for censoring conservative voices, X has become the right’s favorite place for freedom. Only 17 percent of Republicans thought Twitter was good for democracy in 2021, but 53 percent said X was good for democracy in 2024, according to the Pew survey.
“Democratic users feel that people being harassed is a big problem on the platform, and conversely, Republicans who post about politics are particularly likely to do so because their views feel welcome there,” Colin McClain, one of the authors of the Pew study told me this week. . McClain added that “in recent years, we have not seen any mass departures or swarms to or from X in our data, either as a whole or as a group.”
None of this should come as a huge surprise if you’ve spent any time on X. But the partisan divide took on new dimensions for this year’s election, if only because Republicans who felt their voices were heard on X also felt heard at the ballot box.
Their man won, and maybe Weird, violent memes on X helped
Elon Musk is just getting started
We don’t know if X will grow or change — or just remain his same troubled self — as Trump prepares to take office again. We know that Elon Musk did not do politics. There was musk On Trump’s side The results were announced on election night at Mar-a-Lago, and there’s good reason to believe we’ll be seeing the owner of SpaceX in DC very soon.
As far as politics go, Musk said He did not fund political contests. In a livestream on X, the billionaire said his America PAC “will continue beyond this election, and prepare for the midterms and any midterms.” Meanwhile, Trump said in his victory speech, “We have a new star,” Trump said. “A star is born – Elon!”
Trump in September Musk has promised a role The title of a task force to review federal spending, which would “drastically reform” the federal government. This is understandable since it was Musk who pitched the idea of such a task force to the president-elect. Even Trump Suggest a new job title“Secretary of Cost Cutting,” when Musk suggested he head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which does not exist and whose acronym is a reference to A dog-themed cryptocurrency. Musk later told Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally that he Wanted to cut $2 trillion From the federal budget, that would be very difficult.
It’s easy, however, to see how many of Musk’s companies look Stand to benefit immeasurably From close ties to the Trump administration. SpaceX is already one of NASA’s primary contractors millions of if not Several billion dollars with each contract. Musk’s communication with Vladimir Putin Allegedly jeopardizing these agreementsEven knowing what we know Trump affinity As for the Russian dictator, the president-elect won’t mind.
Tesla also stands to benefit, which explains why the company’s stock soared after Trump’s victory was confirmed. EV companies want to build a large fleet of robotaxis, a tall order that comes with it Significant regulatory challenges. Tesla’s self-driving car program has generally faced pushback from federal authorities, including the recently announced Investigate the system. Regulatory approvals and investigations can be easier, of course, if you bankroll the president’s final push for reelection.
Musk’s bet on developing artificial general intelligence, xAI, could also expect more cooperation from the federal government. A second Trump administration could pave the way for xAI to gain access to cheaper energy, especially as it faces heat For operating gas generators without permission to power its data center in Memphis.
On top of this lucrative potential deal, the idea that X could win new relevance and influence must feel like a bonus for Musk.
For its right-wing users though, X is finally the digital town square it was promised to them months ago. It seems like just yesterday, Elon Musk took a dive into Twitter’s headquarters on his first day as the company’s owner. (“Let that sink in” is supposed to be a joke there.)
Musk paid tribute in a post on X just after midnight on election night. Except this time, In a doctored pictureHe was taking a canoe to the Oval Office.
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