How Elon Musk has transformed the politics of X

It’s no secret that the social media platform formerly known as Twitter has changed a lot in the years following Elon Musk’s purchase of the company. Since 2022, X has cut back on content moderation and become a home for right-wing political accounts and viral conspiracy theories. What was once a useful platform for mainstream journalists and political staffers on both sides of the aisle to follow breaking news has slowly degraded into a cesspool where pro-MAGA memes from anonymous accounts are served to users whether or not they follow them.

We all know X has transformed into a conservative platform, but to what extent? Using social-tracking dashboards built by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, I analyzed 100 of the top political accounts on X, and sorted them based on their total post views year to date and their partisan lean. The picture is pretty striking:

Conservative accounts comprised 60 out of the top 100 political accounts with the most post views in 2025. Neutral or mainstream news accounts like the AP or CNN made up 11, and progressive accounts accounted for 29 of the top 100. In total, posts from the conservative accounts received 131.4 billion views, while progressive posts were seen 8.6 billion times. The most shocking data, however, comes from Elon Musk’s own account. 

According to CAP’s data, Musk has posted 10,315 times this year, and those posts have received over 91 billion views. That’s more than all of the other top political accounts combined.

“Elon Musk averages the third-highest views per post of any Twitter account in our database, behind Donald Trump and Barack Obama. The difference is he posts a lot,” says Eric Coffin-Gould, Senior Director of Analytics at CAP Action. “So far in 2025, Elon is averaging 97 posts per day and an additional 30 retweets. That’s more than double what he was spewing out this time last year. And each of these posts is getting insane engagement and views, almost definitely inflated either by bots or by tweaks he made to the algorithm.” 

Although I’m sure he’s a solid sh*tposter, it’s basically impossible that Elon Musk’s dominance on the platform would happen organically without some artificial boosting from the platform’s engineers. In fact, in early 2023, Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer of Platformer revealed how Musk ordered exactly that - company engineers were instructed to give his account a “power user multiplier” to promote his own content in all users’ feeds automatically. Since then, numerous studies and news reports have examined how Musk is turning up the dial on his own content or tweaking the platform’s algorithm to boost conservative posts. 

Musk’s potential rigging of X’s algorithm, either in favor of his own MAGA-friendly takes or in favor of conservative accounts writ large, has presented Democrats with a real dilemma. As I’ve written before, many progressives have fled the platform entirely, building a much smaller echo chamber on Bluesky to talk amongst themselves. Progressive organizations abandoning their longtime audiences on X for a much smaller megaphone on Bluesky has been a tough tradeoff. “A boycott of X is a classic collective action problem—everyone knows the platform’s power is corrosive, but no one wants to give up the audience they’ve built,” progressive strategist Waleed Shahid told me.

Then there’s the consideration that despite its chaos, longtime Twitter-addicted journalists in the mainstream political press are still giving weight to and are citing the opinions they find on the platform. With fewer Democratic players and posts in their feeds, could X be skewing their coverage or perception of the political battlefield? Would the platform’s journalistic utility change if all major Democratic elected officials left X en masse? “The engine of X isn’t memes or influencers—it’s political attention, news, and legitimacy,” says Shahid. “If Democratic officials walked away together, taking their attention and followers with them, the platform’s political influence would collapse overnight.”

At the same time, liberal expectations of X’s eventual downfall could be premature. Just last week, The Financial Times reported that the social media company’s value had bounced back up to $44 billion—the same amount Musk paid for the platform several years ago.

Democrats gleefully share deepfake audio of JD Vance

Over the weekend, a number of large progressive accounts and influencers across social media platforms were excitedly sharing a too-good-to-be-true, behind-the-scenes audio clip of Vice President JD Vance criticizing Elon Musk. On Instagram, this version of the post from popular news creator @agirlhasnopresident received over 1.3 million views, and this one from @roguednc had been seen over 1 million times as of yesterday afternoon. On X and TikTok, numerous major Dem accounts shared the deepfake, receiving millions more views, likes, comments, and shares.

As you can see, the audio was pretty cheesy and not very believable. Still, just like right-wing personalities do, Democratic partisans eager to score a quick win against MAGA used it to generate some clicks for their accounts. Ultimately, it became enough of a thing that the Vice President’s team felt the need to respond.

More things you should read:

• By now you’ve already read it, but if you haven’t, this one is a doozy: The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was mistakenly added to a private group chat on Signal with the Vice President, Secretary of State, CIA Director, National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense, and others. He sat there silently as they shared their secret plans for attacking the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and watched as they congratulated themselves with fist bump emojis after the strikes occurred.

• Elon Musk’s political action committee is paying voters $100 to sign a petition in next week’s hotly-contested election for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat.

• The New York Times recently published a pair of profiles of conservative-leaning cultural media creators targeting women. There’s this look at Evie Magazine, and this piece on Sasha Stone. 

• Republicans are spreading a conspiracy theory that every bill, pardon, or executive order signed by Joe Biden that used an auto-pen device is null and invalid. 

• There’s a new, supposedly nonpartisan environmental group launching this month called “Nature is Nonpartisan.” Emily Amick flagged that it may have ulterior motives. 

• So much ink has been spilled on how the Left has engaged influencers in political marketing campaigns over the past few years, but people are finally discovering that right-wing creators are being paid, too. 

• Donald Trump is distraught by his presidential portrait that Republicans installed in the Colorado State Capitol. Apparently, it was paid for via a grassroots GoFundMe campaign. 

• Speaking of the 47th president, he continues to pump his eponymous meme coin for personal profit, Judd Legum reports. 

• Former President Barack Obama has joined Bluesky. His first post commemorated the 15th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. 

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