Elon Musk, a magnate who made his fortune from high-risk ventures, surprisingly pledged his total allegiance to Donald Trump nearly immediately following an attempted attack on the former President last year. This was a man who had previously been publicly dismissed by Trump for heading firms that produced ‘self-driving vehicles prone to accidents’ and ‘directionless rockets’. Musk’s sudden change of heart was characterized by an enigmatic red MAGA hat prominently displayed in his profile picture and continuous cascade of pro-Trump memes across the online platform he now dominated. To the seasoned political strategists in the capital, it was quite clear what was unfolding: a high-stakes power play involving the richest man on earth and an influential figure in American politics who was famed for never forgetting a slight.
Musk had found himself in a potentially dangerous symbiotic relationship where finance was exchanged for influence and a digital platform leveraged for political power. It was a high-octane, volatile mixture that everyone expected to implode at any moment. Musk had thrown his weight behind Trump’s 2024 presidential bid for a span of almost three years, putting the mighty influence of his online platform to use in an attempt to reconstruct Trump’s tarnished public persona. A revealing analysis from the Wall Street Journal demonstrated that even new users who were not politically inclined were not spared from the onslaught of the pro-Trump agenda.
The Washington Post revealed an uncomfortable truth: the Republican congressional handles had commanded billions more views than that of their Democratic rivals. The billionaire’s direct involvement in the platform’s functioning blurred the lines between himself as the owner and as a political influencer. Prof. Hamed Qahri-Saremi from Cleveland State University expressed concern about the recent trend of social media owners becoming political players rather than the impartial hosts they used to be.
The moment Musk declared his support for Trump on his social media platform, the tint of the platform was instantly altered. Suddenly, there was a profusion of posts singing praises of Trump and ruthlessly disparaging Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The trend escalated dramatically once Biden withdrew from the race. The onslaught against Kamala Harris wasn’t simply permitted but was proactively fueled by Musk himself. A curious byproduct of the tech mogul’s strategy was the noticeable tweak in the platform’s fact-checking process.
Musk did away with professional fact-checkers on the platform, in favor of a user and algorithm-driven crowdsourced system dubbed the ‘Community Notes’. Conventional authentication badges, the customary markers of genuine accounts, vanished under his rule. Rapid and unchecked proliferation of falsehoods and politically flavored propaganda was the fallout of such an approach, more so in the case of verified accounts that had the prerogative to shell out money for extending their reach.
As the largest account holder on the platform, the iron-fisted control exerted by Musk was palpable. His posts inadvertently ended up clogging user feeds even when they weren’t amongst his followers. In some reported cases, uninterested users who had made a conscious decision to block Musk still found themselves being exposed to his messages. The ability to rake up millions of impressions with a single post illustrated the size and scope of Musk’s influence.
And the specifics of this influence are worth noting. According to a study by Pew Research Center, a startling 59 percent of the users were dependent on this platform for their daily news consumption. Contrasting starkly to Trump, who primarily engages on Truth Social, Musk has the privilege of controlling not only the content but also the underlying programming code. He can manipulate engagement metrics, orchestrate boosts with a retweet, or, using the platform’s algorithms, systematically relegate his detractors into oblivion.
Musk’s overarching control oversaw even the basic foundations of the platform – the norms of speech, the operational algorithms, and deliberate visibility metrics. When Kamala Harris initiated her run for the general election last fall, her campaign witnessed a mysterious suppression. Posts endorsing her were mysteriously disappearing from timelines. Accounts supporting Harris reported inexplicable drops in engagement, sudden account suspensions, and fading trending topics.
The powerful tech billionaire has dismissed any allegations of meddling with the algorithm for political gains. But now that he has complete control over the now private company, the algorithm is less transparent than ever. It seems to be deliberately obscured from everyone but Musk and the programmers on his payroll.
In today’s digital age, such murky programming algorithms can become a loaded weapon, potentially capable of controlling the narrative and perceptions of the global online community. As a magnate with unrivaled control over the platform, Musk could use this weapon against the incumbent president if he so wished.