The election victory of US President-elect Donald Trump (78) was just a few hours old when the Trump camp already launched the attack on the so-called mainstream media. “The established media lied to you,” wrote Twitter owner Elon Musk (53) to his 204 million followers on November 8th. Massive retweets and tweets followed about how wrong the media had been in the election, that they had become propaganda -have become the arm of the Democrats.
The truth, according to the tenor, can only be found at X. A thesis that Trump supporters such as hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman (58) and crypto investor Tyler Winklevoss (43) carried forward. X is not an echo chamber, wrote Winklevoss. “It’s America.” And Ackmann, himself co-owner of the platform, was already happy that in a Trump America many people would no longer use mainstream media as their first source of information in the future, but rather platforms like X and podcasts. And he was already happy to increasing user numbers.
In fact, X and various podcasts, in which the candidates were able to appear very close to the people without critical questions, played an enormous role in the current election. Both the Trump side and the Democratic camp of the defeated presidential candidate Kamala Harris (60) spent millions on agencies, live streams and political posts from influencers. The winners don’t want to leave it at that. You want: direct access to people’s eyes, ears and political opinions – without having to subject yourself to annoying fact checks or listen to the other side. They are determined to break the monopoly of traditional media.
For X, this offers the chance to get the millions from the advertising industry back. After Musk launched the platform, then called Twitter, at the end of October 2022 for around $44 billion, business had collapsed. Musk had taken a rigid austerity course and thrown out a large proportion of employees, especially in the content moderation teams. Given the boom in hate messages, pornographic content and fake news on the platform, many companies withdrew. As the number of users fell, sales fell by more than 80 percent.
“There is greater scope for what some call hate speech,” said Musk, describing the development on his platform. However, he stylized this during the election campaign as an important contribution to freedom of expression. While his opponents discredited X as a portal for agitators, he and his followers portrayed Musk repeatedly called on his followers to send x.com links to inform them about the real situation, according to the owner.
Celebrate boom at X
The day after the election, X boss Linda Yaccarino (60) was happy about the numbers. The number of new registrations on election day increased by 15.5 percent, she retweeted a post from her data department. And Musk also announced an all-time record with almost 121 million hours of global X usage on election day. Although the numbers are not understandable to outsiders, they are intended to herald a turnaround. “Reporting for duty,” Yaccarino commented on a well-known Tesla influencer’s assessment that X would experience exponential user growth after the elections.
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Appointed by Musk: X boss Linda Yaccarino
Photo: Nathan Howard / REUTERS
In fact, social media played a “hugely important role” in the US election campaign, says Timothy Graham, who researches the global influence of social media on elections at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. Platforms like X also often serves as a source of inspiration for classic media. But now this junction is in danger of being abused.
With X and to a lesser extent Truth Social, the social network of Trump himself
, Musk, Trump and other Republican actors would now have enormous power to influence public opinion. Musk, as the owner of the company, can decide completely uncontrolled and at will which posts are successful and what users can see. After one In-depth analysis of Musk posts
In the wake of the US election, Graham is convinced that Musk has already used X specifically for political campaigns. After announcing his support for Trump, his own posts received a massive boost in reach and engagement, Graham reports, citing his studies. There was also increasing evidence that “Musk changed the algorithms so that they favored Republican topics and actors.” “Musk has used his platform as a propaganda machine for the Republican cause.”
The battle for attention
One of the methods was so-called “attention bombing”. This involves bombarding a platform over and over again at very short intervals with an enormous amount of sometimes questionable information. Any other viewpoints, approaches or narratives could no longer penetrate due to the sheer volume of posts , said Graham. This could then lead people to believe even the most absurd fake news, such as that Haitians in the American city of Springfield are eating the residents’ pets.
In doing so, the actors make use of the fundamental mechanisms of how we absorb information, explains scientist Lisa Fazio in an interview with manager magazin, who researches human information processing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, USA. “When people hear information over and over again, they are more likely to believe it is true,” says Fazio, reflecting the current state of research. “So if you find yourself in a media environment like
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This could lead to lasting changes in the US media landscape. Nobody should have any doubts about the intentions anymore. As early as 2023, Trump announced that, as the future US President, there would be no moderation to be banned on platforms in the future
and punish them with draconian measures.
And according to US Vice President-elect J.D. Vance (40), this new approach should also apply in Europe in the future. Otherwise they would see each other USA hardly able to continue supporting NATO, he recently threatened.
American power, according to Vance, is tied to certain conditions.