A week after Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump for president, President Joe Biden’s team used Musk’s social media platform X — as well as more neutral spaces like Facebook and Instagram — to announce he was ending his re-election bid.
This is a testament to how deeply entrenched the platform is in the world of politics and media, as well as among users looking for instant updates on news and breaking events. A recent Pew Research Center survey showed that although Meta’s Facebook and Instagram and TikTok have more users, X users said that keeping up with news is not the reason they use these platforms. The exception is
“X is where history happens,” said X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who posted a screenshot of Biden’s statement on Sunday. While commentators noted that the same message was posted on other social media platforms, the narrative remains important to X and its long-touted efforts to become a “digital town square.”
Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Technology Policy Institute, said: “Other platforms aim to replace affected places.
Although the site has become a less reliable place to find accurate information, largely due to the changes Musk has made since taking the helm. Since taking over in 2022, Musk has upended many of his former Twitter’s policies, including those around misinformation and hate speech, cutting staff and changing the content people see on the site.
“It seems unlikely that potential competitors will displace Twitter as the go-to platform for political news,” Kreps said. “In an ideal world, many people would and do try to go elsewhere, but these alternatives need to offer what people want. and use the product, but they haven’t done so yet, and until then, we may see inconsistent principles and practices on the part of users.
As its owner and arguably its most influential user, Musk has also used and amplified false claims that Democrats were secretly flying immigrants to vote in U.S. elections.
Long before he endorsed Trump, Musk had been gradually moving to the right in his posts and actions on the platform. He reinstated previously banned accounts such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and former US President Donald Trump, as well as accounts belonging to neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Musk claimed that advertisers who stopped advertising on X in response to anti-Semitism and other hateful material were engaging in “blackmail.” It was on X that he announced that he would move the company’s headquarters, as well as SpaceX’s headquarters, from dark blue California to red Texas.
“What’s important about Twitter is the community of users that have embraced it for so long. Today, more and more journalists, elected officials, and thought leaders are still using it. “It’s a way to reach a large and influential audience quickly. Effective way of messaging. However, this group is clearly declining and you’re seeing users of the platform jumping ship left and right. As you can see, the content is becoming more and more extreme and not suitable for general consumption.
Biden’s message on Sunday was posted on X and two minutes later on Meta platforms such as Facebook and Threads. It was unclear whether this was intentional, and the campaign did not immediately return a message for comment on Monday.
“You know, it could just be someone on the inside hitting the enter key on the keyboard first,” Jablonowski said. “But I think the world you’re seeing is certainly five years ago, and this could just be Twitter. , and now you can see it on many different websites.”
He noted that political campaigns need to meet voters where they are – and for many, that’s still X.
“Democrats are still on Fox News,” he said.
However, when it comes to ad revenue, “that money is clearly going to Meta properties and YouTube. I don’t know if many, if any, campaigns, at least on the Democratic side, want to spend ad dollars on (X) .
