How Musk’s X account floods feeds with pro-Trump messages and election misinformation

Those who follow billionaire Elon Musk's X account (formerly Twitter) cannot miss his full commitment to promoting Donald Trump's election campaign. Almost all of Musk’s posts, of which there are dozens daily, promote Trumpist messages and baseless conspiracies about election fraud. Each post receives millions of views and tens of thousands of comments, shares, and likes, making it seem as though the platform Musk controls is devoted to amplifying his content. Now, data collected and analyzed by The New York Times reveals just how deeply X is biased toward promoting Musk's posts.

Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. By March 2023, his account reached 133 million followers, surpassing Barack Obama’s to become the most-followed account on X. Musk’s follower count has since grown to 202 million—a 52% increase—while Obama’s followers have declined slightly to 131 million.

Simultaneously, the engagement on Musk’s account has skyrocketed. Over a two-week period in October, Musk posted 1,200 times, generating an average of 65,000 comments, likes, or shares per post, up 117% from 30,000 in the same period last year. In contrast, the 27 posts Obama published over this period each received about 21,000 engagements. Musk’s posting frequency has also surged; he published 504 posts in June and 1,000 in September.

According to data provided by fact-checking organization PolitiFact to The New York Times, Musk’s October posts focused on promoting election conspiracy theories, criticism of the administration’s response to Hurricane Helena, and support for voter ID legislation. These posts received 679 million views, 5.3 million likes, and 1.6 million shares. “If Trump is not elected, this will be the last election,” Musk wrote on September 29. This post alone garnered 104 million views and 179,000 shares.

X’s efforts to boost Musk’s exposure are evident. Last month, The New York Times created six new X accounts, each of which was recommended to follow Musk’s account as well as his companies, SpaceX and Tesla. In interviews with over a dozen users from Pennsylvania, a key state in the current election, eight reported seeing Musk’s posts on their algorithm-driven timeline, despite only one of them following him.

Previously, it was reported that after a Super Bowl post by Joe Biden generated more engagement than one by Musk, Musk demanded that his team improve his post’s exposure. In response, X developers reportedly updated the platform's recommendation algorithm to prioritize Musk's posts.