- It certainly seems that Twitter is more likely to feature content from Republican or right-wing accounts.
- That’s the conclusion from two new reports in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
- Is it because Twitter users love it? Or because Trump supporter Elon Musk wants them to see it?
Is X, the service many of us still call Twitter, more likely to show users political posts from Republicans, or right-leaning accounts?
yes. Maybe.
That’s the conclusion from two different deep dives published Tuesday in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
The next question: Is Twitter doing this on purpose, at the behest of its owner, Elon Musk?
This is more difficult to answer.
Both questions matter, of course, because we’re a week away from the US presidential election. And while Twitter has become a financial disaster under Musk’s ownership, it remains an important news hub for many millions of people.
Meanwhile, Musk, who once supported Democrats, has thrown himself fully behind Donald Trump’s campaign. He says “Democracy is over” if Trump loses.
Neither the Journal nor the Post wants to draw a direct line between Musk’s politics and Twitter’s operations. But there are certainly some hints of dotted lines. I’ve asked Twitter for comment.
Details: Both newspapers used software to analyze what users see on Twitter. The Post looked at a year-plus of posts from key congressional accounts; The newspaper created 14 brand new Twitter accounts controlled by bots and spread across the US.
The Post’s bottom line: Tweets from congressional accounts across the spectrum are getting less attention than they did a year ago. But Republicans’ tweets are much more likely to go viral than Democrats’.
The Gazette’s findings do not exactly sync with those of the Post. It reveals that its theoretical new users, who told Twitter they are NO interested in politics, however, found their sources blocked with political content. And while it says Kamala Harris’s campaign was the most-viewed account, the platform tilted overall: “Ten of the other 14 most-viewed skewed right, including Trump’s, and overall, pro-Trump content appeared about two times more often than pro-Harris material”.
What accounts for the shift to the right? Neither letter wants to say definitively. But both revolve around two possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive:
Theory 1: Twitter is showing users what users want to see.
This is the argument Musk makes himself. And there is a good logic behind it. Initially, even before Musk bought Twitter, its own researchers found that “the political right enjoys higher amplification compared to the political left” on the platform.
And it’s entirely plausible that some left-leaning users have left the platform during Musk’s ownership, in part because he reinstated accounts from right-leaning users, including Trump himself. Conservatives may also flock to her for the same reason.
And those users may be more likely to engage with right-leaning content, causing the site’s algorithm to show them more of it—in the same way all of them Social media sites generally work with popular content.
Theory 2: Twitter is showing users what Musk wants them to see.
This is a notion that some current and former Twitter users believe, although there is no direct evidence that this is the case. But there’s plenty of precedent for this, as Musk has repeatedly moved the platform at his whim in the past.
Most famously, Musk ordered engineers to surface his tweets after the 2023 Super Bowl, as Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer has reported.
Musk has also used the site to arrange interviews with political figures he’s interested in, including a conversation with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023 and one with Trump this summer.
The paper also reports that “recently, Musk complained that some users saw his live streams” and forced his engineers to promote those conversations on the site.