X-Odus

Did Elon Musk's purchase of the social media platform help Trump win?

Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

In politics, I do not agree generally with the saying "the worse, the better," which is usually attributed to Lenin. However, it may be true with social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. This week, I came to the conclusion that the benefits of posting are outweighed by the sheer amount of disinformation circulating on the platform. While I will keep my account for newsgathering purposes, it's not a platform I will post Public Sphere content on or otherwise engage with. 

Elon Musk, who purchased the site in 2022 for $44 billion, has actually done me -- and I think other journalists -- a huge favor. The increasingly terrible user experience on X convinced me to stop working for free on an addictive platform and instead focus on building an audience here on Substack. (You can find me on the Twitter-like social media site Bluesky here.)

In 2023, I wrote that "Twitter under Musk will likely turn into something like Facebook: a loud echo chamber where it is difficult to sort fact from fiction." While that has happened, I did not foresee that Musk would turn X into a MAGA echo chamber. However, there is new research showing that after Musk endorsed Donald Trump on July 13, the platform began heavily favoring Musk's posts and pro-Trump content.