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On #ElonMusk’s X, #Republicans go viral as #Democrats disappear
An analysis found that Republicans are posting more, getting followed more & going viral more now that the world’s richest #Trump supporter is running the show.
-Drew Harwell & Jeremy B. Merrill
The top political accounts on #X have seen their audiences crumble in the months before the #election, a signal of the platform’s diminishing #influence & usefulness to political discourse under #billionaire Musk.
Politicians…have struggled to win the attention they once enjoyed on the platform once known as #Twitter, a review of months of data for the 100 top-tweeting congressional accounts, including senators, reps & cmtes, equal parts #Democrat & #Republican.
…Tweets…still going viral—[are] virtually all…from #Republicans. The Republicans have also seen huge spikes in follower counts over the Democrats, & their tweets have collectively received billions more views.
#X has seen a dramatic exodus of users since #Musk took over in 2022, acc/to independent analysts such as Edison Research, which said in March that X’s usage in the #UnitedStates had dropped 30% [not enough] since last year. The investment firm Fidelity this month estimated that X’s value has plunged by about 80% [that’s more like it] since Musk’s takeover.
But the viewers that have stayed on #X now largely see posts that skew toward the political bent of #ElonMusk himself, an avid booster of #Trump who has *jumped* onstage w/him at rallies, donated $118M toward his bid for a 2nd term & launched a [highly illegal] daily $1M giveaway for registered voters in swing states. #Musk, the world’s richest man, *paid* $44B [not really, he used #Tesla #stock as virtual #cash] to buy X & has since become its biggest user….
It’s *almost* impossible to say whether #X is explicitly suppressing #Democrats, as some #liberals have speculated: The Post’s analysis turned up no direct evidence of manipulation. The shift in attention could reflect changing attitudes among #users who have stuck around, given that many left-wing users have said they left the platform of their own accord, annoyed by #Musk’s antics & X’s redrawn rules.
But the transformation of a #platform once obsessed over by #politicians, #journalists & #news junkies has fueled agitation among #Democrats over lost opportunities for messaging during an #election year that has been bitterly fought over online. A Pew Research Center survey in March found that, of the people who post about political issues on #X, #Republicans were much more likely to say their “views are welcome there.”
@Nonilex
This is infuriating because it’s completely unsurprising. Government and education accounts never migrated away. They were too addicted to free IT support and chasing likes. So then the media never had a reason to migrate elsewhere.
Progressive policy makers should’ve listened to their base and pushed for internal reform of departmental social media accounts but alas.