On July 13, shortly after Donald Trump was assassinated, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), tweeted to his more than 200 million followers:

I fully support President Trump and hope for his speedy recovery.

Musk's efforts to influence who wins next week's US presidential election continue. For example, in the last three months he has donated more than $100 million to a political action committee called America PAC that promotes Trump.

But our new research (currently available in pre-print form) suggests that Musk may also exert influence in other, more subtle ways. However, the platform's increasing opacity to researchers makes it difficult to say with certainty.

Shortly after Musk endorsed Trump's presidential campaign, there was a statistically unusual spike in interactions on his X account. Suddenly, his posts were receiving many more views, retweets, and likes compared to other prominent political accounts on the platform.

This raises suspicions that Musk has optimized the platform's algorithm to increase the reach of his posts in the run-up to the US presidential election. It also highlights the problems with how social media platforms like X are currently regulated worldwide.

Not the first time

Musk has experience tweaking X's algorithms so that his own content reaches more people.

Last year, he reportedly mobilized a team of around 80 engineers to algorithmically improve his posts. This came after his tweet supporting the Philadelphia Eagles during the Super Bowl was topped by a similar tweet from President Joe Biden. Musk appeared to confirm this by posting an image showing a woman with the caption “Elon's Tweets” force-feeding another woman with the caption “Twitter.”

To see whether Musk did this again in the run-up to the US election, we compared Musk's engagement metrics – such as the number of views, retweets and likes – to a number of other prominent political accounts on the social media platform. The data covers the period from January 1, 2024 to October 25, 2024.

Other political reports that served as a basis for comparison included those of right-wing commentators Jack Posobiec, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. Our study also examined reports at the other end of the political spectrum, including that of US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, US Senator Bernie Sanders and Vice President Kamala Harris.

A sudden and significant increase

Since July, engagement with Musk's X account has suddenly and significantly increased.

The number of views on his posts increased by 138%, retweets by 238% and likes by 186%.

In contrast, other prominent political accounts on

This suggests that while engagement across all accounts increased after July, Musk's metrics saw a particularly large increase, particularly in retweets and likes.

The research also found that other conservative and right-wing X accounts performed better in terms of post visibility compared to progressive and left-wing accounts since July.

The Conversation reached out to X for comment on the investigation but did not receive a response by deadline.

Without backstage access to the company's operations, it's impossible to know for sure whether changes to the curation system will increase the owner's contributions. Since Musk took over, the platform has restricted access for researchers. This means that there are limitations to the amount of data we were able to collect for this study.

However, the Washington Post recently found that tweets from Republicans are far more likely to go viral and receive billions more views than tweets from Democrats. Similarly, a Wall Street Journal investigation found that new users of the platform are “inundated with political content” that disproportionately favors Trump.

Since Musk bought the platform, it has become more sympathetic to right-wing figures, including those previously banned for spreading harmful and false information.

The myth of neutrality

The findings raise questions about the extent to which Musk's influential social media platform bolsters its owner's political agenda.

Musk, whose companies have extensive government contracts, has turned his blatant support for Trump into a public and financial spectacle. The billionaire tech tycoon is reportedly Trump's second-largest financial backer. He also promoted Trump in a flawed live interview on X and wrote a series of tweets promoting Trump's campaign.

Musk is also distributing $1 million daily to select registered voters. This plan (which has drawn questions about its legality) appears to be aimed at encouraging voter registration among sympathizers in swing states.

Musk's actions have torpedoed the fantasy that social media platforms like X are neutral. Given that he previously tested the algorithm of

For too long, social media platforms have enjoyed immunity for the information they selectively inject into users' feeds. It is time for governments to rethink their approach to regulating the oligopolistic power of a handful of tech billionaires over our information environment.