How Elon Musk’s X Account Dominates the Platform Ahead of the Election

Days ahead of the presidential election, Elon Musk’s centrality to his social media platform, X, has become more pronounced. Mr. Musk has posted more than 3,000 times on the site in the last month, according to a tally by The New York Times, campaigning heavily for former President Donald J. Trump. The tech mogul has also shared dozens of unfounded claims about the election, including that votes will be rigged against his preferred candidate. All of his posts have traveled further and resounded more widely than ever as Mr. Musk’s X account has come to dominate the platform, effectively making him the host of his own social media site. His account is the most popular on X by a significant margin, with more than 202 million followers. It drives the platform’s daily conversation and nudges discussion to the right, according to independent research and an analysis by The Times. And engagement with his posts — including likes and reposts — has doubled over the past year, according to X’s metrics. The repercussions of Mr. Musk’s pre-eminence on X — especially as he casts doubt on the integrity of the election — could be profound. “It’s so consequential that someone who is such a partisan figure is inhabiting that piece of digital real estate,” said Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a group that studies online disinformation. Mr. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment. Last month, Mr. Musk posted that X products were the “best thing on the Internet for truth.” Here’s how his account has taken center stage at X. The Most-Followed by Far Mr. Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022, vowing to make it a public town square. He swiftly became the most powerful super-user on the site. Mr. Musk overtook former President Barack Obama in March 2023 to become the most-followed person on the platform, with 133 million followers. Since then, his count has risen 52 percent. Mr. Obama’s following, in contrast, has decreased slightly, by about two million, to just over 131 million followers. (Bot accounts exist on X and may be a factor in some of the tallies.) Alongside Mr. Musk’s ballooning follower count, engagement with his posts has mushroomed. During a two-week period in October, Mr. Musk’s 1,220 posts generated nearly 65,000 engagements on average, according to the Times analysis of Mr. Musk’s posts over the past year that tallied likes and reposts. In a similar stretch a year ago, his posts averaged around 30,000 engagements. That attention and interaction are unique to Mr. Musk, according to the Times analysis. Twenty-seven posts to Mr. Obama’s account — still the second-most popular — received 573,000 reposts during a two-week period in early October. The 1,200 posts from Mr. Musk’s account were reposted nearly 11 million times. Much of Mr. Musk’s influence on X stems from the rate at which he posts, which has skyrocketed in recent months. In June, he posted 504 times, according to data gathered from his account by Bright Data, an online data collection service. By September, he was posting more than 1,000 times a month. Amplifying Disinformation So what has Mr. Musk used his account’s dominance on X to do? In recent weeks, he has posted almost exclusively about politics. Some of that includes misleading information about the election, according to a study by the nonpartisan fact-checking service PolitiFact. Mr. Musk, 53, has claimed that a vast fraud is underway to steal the election from Mr. Trump and that Democrats are shuttling immigrants into the country to vote illegally, among other false narratives. Posts from Mr. Musk in the first two weeks of October that amplified conspiracy theories about the election, the government’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton and voter identification laws were viewed nearly 679 million times, were liked more than 5.3 million times and were reposted more than 1.6 million times, according to PolitiFact. “If Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election,” Mr. Musk posted on Sept. 29. The post was viewed more than 103 million times and reposted nearly 180,000 times. “He’s using his platform to spread these ridiculous and harmful conspiracy theories,” said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory expert and author of a book about QAnon, a pro-Trump movement that claims the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. “He has enabled this vast and very lucrative web of disinformation superspreaders while also being one himself.” A Recommended Account Can X users escape Mr. Musk? Anecdotally at least, the answer is no. When new users set up accounts on X, the platform recommends whom to follow. Mr. Musk is one of the first suggested accounts, The Times found by registering a half dozen accounts last month. X also suggests users follow topics related to his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. Mr. Musk previously took steps at X to ensure that his account is front and center. After a post by President Biden about the 2023 Super Bowl received more engagement than Mr. Musk’s, the billionaire demanded that X’s teams find a way to improve his figures, three people with knowledge of the matter said. A month later, the company published the code that drives its recommendation algorithm in a transparency effort. The code contained a snippet that marked Mr. Musk’s posts as a priority. The public code has not been updated since. “There are fewer and fewer ‘main characters’ who are not Musk, and virtually anyone who breaks through is going to be subsumed into Musk’s orbit,” Mr. Brooking said. In Pennsylvania, a swing state where Mr. Musk has made a huge effort to campaign for Mr. Trump, The Times interviewed more than a dozen X users last month and found that eight were seeing Mr. Musk’s posts in their “For You” timeline — even though only one of them followed him. Some of the posts by Mr. Musk seen by Pennsylvania X users included a pro-Trump meme, a recent SpaceX rocket launch and an accusation that Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, created an “incitement to violence.” The overwhelming presence of Mr. Musk on X has frustrated some users. “He’s definitely a really smart guy, but if I don’t follow him, he shouldn’t be popping up on my page,” said Jakob Fallat, 19, a student at Montgomery County Community College who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs. He typically uses X about four times a week to follow sports, he said. Jack Dugan, 20, a student at Gwynedd Mercy University in Lower Gwynedd Township, Pa., said he used X primarily to follow his friends and get news about sports and politics. He does not follow Mr. Musk but still sees his posts. “It’s pretty much all he posts now: ‘Trump, Trump, Trump,’” Mr. Dugan said, adding that he was undecided on whom he would vote for. “I’m not really huge on it.” Kate Conger is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at kate.conger@nytimes.com. More about Kate Conger Dylan Freedman is a machine-learning engineer and journalist working on a team at The Times that leverages A.I. for reporting. More about Dylan Freedman 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, X (Formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, Donald Trump The World of Elon Musk The billionaire’s portfolio includes the world’s most valuable automaker, an innovative rocket company and plenty of drama. — Musk and Memphis: Residents of Memphis say Mr. Musk’s data center for artificial intelligence is compounding their pollution burden and adding stress on the local electrical grid. — SpaceX Gets Into the Spy Game: The Pentagon needs what the Elon Musk-owned company offers to compete with China even as it frets over its potential for dominance and the billionaire’s global interests. — An Unconventional Family Situation: Musk, who warns of population collapse and the moral obligation to have children, bought a secret compound in Austin, Texas, for his 11 kids and their mothers. — Supporting Trump: Musk has grown only more frenzied in his efforts to help elect Donald Trump, and has emerged as a central character in the campaign’s closing days. — Justice Department Warning: The department sent a letter to the super PAC founded by Musk warning that awarding $1 million to registered voters who signed a petition might violate federal laws against paying voters, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.