Elon Musk’s X may have tweaked its algorithm to boost his account, pro-Trump posts

Elon Musk is the most followed person on X — a social media platform he owns. Yet, there are many who don’t follow Musk for reasons of their choice. But Musk’s omnipresent on X whether you follow him or not. For instance, before writing this news article, this writer scrolled and refreshed his X account three times. All three times the top post in the feed was by Musk. A study now reveals that Musk may have tweaked X’s algorithm to boost his account, pro-Republican accounts and posts which are in favour of Donald Trump.

The study was conducted by Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane and reveals a structural engagement shift around mid-July 2024. The study suggests that Musk made platform-level changes that influenced engagement metrics. Interestingly the change coincided with Musk’s formal endorsement of Trump on July 13.

According to the study, the changes were implemented in two phases. The first phase was about Musk’s account and saw a marked differential uplift across all engagement metrics. “Musk’s account not only started with a higher baseline compared to the other accounts in the analysis but also received a significant additional boost post-change, indicating a potential algorithmic adjustment that preferentially enhanced visibility and interaction for Musk’s posts,” noted the study.

The second phase saw an engagement shift in Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning accounts. Republican-leaning accounts exhibited a significant post-change increase relative to Democrat-leaning accounts.