After Musk endorsed Trump, X boosted conservatives, study suggests

Elon Musk’s X whitethorn person tweaked its algorithm to boost his account, on with those of different conservative-leaning users, starting astir the clip helium announced his support of Donald Trump’s statesmanlike campaign. That’s according to a caller study published by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which recovered that Musk’s posts successful peculiar were abruptly overmuch much popular.

The study’s authors — QUT subordinate prof successful integer media Timothy Graham and Monash University communications and media studies prof Mark Andrejevic — archetypal looked astatine Musk’s engagement earlier and aft his July endorsement of Trump. They study that starting astir July 13th, Musks’ posts received 138 percent much views and 238 percent much retweets than earlier that date.

Musk’s numbers “outpaced the wide engagement trends observed crossed the platform,” they concluded. (This insubstantial isn’t the archetypal clip it’s been suggested that X adjusted its algorithm to specifically boost Musk’s account.) The researchers besides recovered that different Republican-leaning accounts they examined saw akin boosts that started successful July, albeit to a lesser degree.

The study’s results are akin to different precocious reported findings by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post of imaginable right-wing bias successful X’s algorithms. However, the researchers accidental they were constricted by the “relatively tiny magnitude of data” that could beryllium collected since the level cut disconnected entree to its Academic API. They adhd that though they don’t spot indications of missing data, there’s “no warrant that 100% of posts person been collected.”