X Boosted Elon Musk's Posts, Researchers Suggest

Posts by both Elon Musk and Republican-leaning accounts became considerably more prominent on X (formerly Twitter) after he endorsed Donald Trump for President according to a study. The paper says the change was significant enough to suggest the site may have intentionally changed its algorithm.

Much of the controversy over the site in the past few years has involved its default "For You" feed, which is created by an algorithm. Rather simply showing all posts from accounts the user follows in chronological order, the feed shows what X implies are the most likely posts to interest and engage the user.

Critics argue that at best the algorithm tries to pick posts that provoke emotion, increasing the chances the user will share or comment on content, spend longer on the site, and ultimately see more advertising. They say at worst the algorithm favors specific political viewpoints.

Researchers Mark Andrejevic and Timothy Graham explored the visibility and prominence of posts by X owner Musk and then a set of accounts which were "Republican-leaning" and "Democrat-leaning". They looked specifically at the number of views each post received, the number of times they were shared (retweeted) and the number of times a user marked the post as a favorite.

Musk's Engagement Rockets

They looked at the figures before and after July 13 last year, the day of Musk's endorsement. They found a significant increase in Musk's engagement figures, to the point that it couldn't be explained as random variation or Musk's endorsement making him more popular with the site's users. They say this "[indicated] a potential algorithmic adjustment that preferentially enhanced visibility and interaction for Musk's posts." (Source: edu.au)

They also found that while all the politically-leaning accounts increased in engagement after July 13 (possibly because of increased interest in the election), there was a significant increase in visibility for views of Republican-leaning accounts relative to the increase for Democrat-leaning accounts. The pattern became more pronounced towards the end of October. (Source: theregister.com)

Visibility Boost

This suggested "a possible recommendation bias favoring Republican content in terms of visibility, potentially via recommendation mechanisms such as the 'For You' feed." However, the difference was only notable in the visibility of the posts. There wasn't a clear Republican advantage in retweets or favorites.

The researchers concluded that "specific visibility advantages may have been selectively applied," raising important questions about the potential impact of algorithmic adjustments on public discourse and the 'neutrality' of social media platforms as information carriers.

What's Your Opinion?

Do you buy the idea the site may have given extra prominence to Musk's posts or those from Republican-leaning accounts? Would such a policy be more acceptable if the site was open about the algorithm? Does it matter if social media sites promote content based on political leaning?