THE WASHINGTON POST: Elon Musk’s unmatched online reach

At 10.39am on the day Donald Trump declared victory for a second term, Elon Musk wrote six words on X: “It is morning in America again”. The post instantly caught fire.

After an hour and a half it had been seen more than ten million times - and was still reaching 120,000 new viewers every minute.

With over 200 million followers Musk has the biggest account on X and increasingly uses it to wield political power.

In 26 days around the election, Musk fired off 3,870 posts that received more than 33 billion views.

Musk’s reach transcends Trump’s, with each of his X posts typically seen by twice as many users as a post from the president-elect.

As Musk prepares for a central role in the U.S. government, the billionaire has a political megaphone unmatched in modern society.

The tech billionaire’s X account blasts his political messages to an audience far bigger than Trump reaches on the platform, data analysis by The Washington Post shows.

From the moment Musk first endorsed Trump in a post on X in July, the tech mogul’s account has been one of his most powerful tools of support for the former president.

The service formerly known as Twitter that he acquired for $44 billion in 2022, and renamed to X, shed users after Musk cut its payroll and loosened content rules. It is much smaller than rivals such as Facebook and TikTok. But X retained its position as a central place for political news and discussion during the 2024 campaign.

Trump’s win and close alliance with Musk has given it new significance.

As Musk became one of Trump’s closest advisers and funnelled at least $US277 million ($437b) into the 2024 campaign cycle, the tech entrepreneur posted less about his companies and more about politics.

He blasted out his approval for Trump’s stances on immigration and the economy, posted AI-generated images and video attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, and spread conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

Almost 40 per cent of Musk’s posts in October and November were about electoral politics, a sharp increase even from this summer. He can insert his views into the feeds of millions of people with a flick of his thumbs.

The billionaire, who is the world’s richest person according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has the most followed account on X and an audience that eclipses other top political accounts, including those of President Joe Biden, Harris and Trump himself, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

Musk’s posts have received a total of 133 billion views since July, data analysis by The Washington Post shows. That’s 15 times Trump’s audience in the same period and more than 16 times the combined reach of all accounts belonging to members of the incoming Congress.

Donald Trump pioneered the use of Twitter as a political cudgel during his first presidency and had about 88 million followers before he was banned in 2021. He used tweets to fire White House staff, threaten world leaders and move financial markets.

As Trump returns to the White House, Musk now has the loudest voice online - and a much larger audience than the president-elect.

Since Election Day, Musk has - in posts that reached millions of users - pressured the incoming administration on Cabinet picks, promoted the nongovernmental “efficiency” commission he will co-chair for Trump and polled users on who Senate Republicans should choose as majority leader.

“For Trump’s first term, he dominated Twitter in terms of the conversation and engagement,” said Tyler Brown, former director of digital strategy for the Republican National Committee. “Now, there is a similar phenomenon going on with Musk.”

To measure Musk’s online might, The Post has been tracking the view count on every one of his X posts approximately every hour from Oct. 25. The dataset, obtained in collaboration with the National Conference on Citizenship, a nonprofit focused on civic engagement, provides an unprecedented look at how posts on the site spread.

Even before Musk restricted Twitter’s API, which researchers used to access data from the site, it wasn’t possible to see how quickly tweets gained an audience. The Post’s data reveal how rapidly Musk’s posts rocket across X.

After just one hour, Musk’s typical post in the week around the election racked up more than 2.4 million views, according to The Post’s analysis, more than the total views received by a typical tweet from Harris.

Trump’s typical post gets 2 million views in the first hour, slightly less than Musk’s. But posts from X’s owner spread faster and wider as more hours pass. Musk is also much more active, and typically posted more than 130 times daily in the 26 days around the election.

The president-elect posts on his own social platform, Truth Social, far more frequently than he does on X. . But Trump’s site, which he launched after he was suspended from Twitter after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, has struggled to win a significant userbase. The President-elect has only 8.4 million followers there compared to his 96 million on X, where his account was reinstated by Musk.

Musk’s huge following and high volume of posts - potentially boosted by intentional moves by the platform to increase its owners visibility - has helped the billionaire become seemingly ubiquitous on X even for users who don’t follow him.

While disclosures from some X investors suggest it has lost much of its value under Musk, his embrace of Trump has transformed the purchase into perhaps his most influential bet.

“Having someone like Elon Musk who is from a sphere outside of politics and the news media talking about Trump, his policies, and criticisms of the Democrats is really helpful for cutting through and getting attention,” said Eric Wilson, Republican digital strategist and executive director of the Center for Campaign Innovation. “And it clearly made an impact.”

Musk and a spokesperson for X did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance Transition, said that Musk’s “ideas and efficiency” would benefit the federal government.

“Elon Musk and President Trump are great friends and brilliant leaders working together to Make America Great Again,” Hughes said.

One Saturday after the election, Musk opined to his followers about two rumoured candidates for treasury secretary - hedge fund manager Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, CEO of financial service firm Cantor Fitzgerald and Trump’s co-transition chair - saying he viewed Lutnick as more of a change agent.

Trump ultimately picked Bessent. And Musk’s post - which garnered more than 3 million views in two hours and twenty minutes - irritated some in the president elect’s circle, who saw it as an attempt to sway Trump’s decision-making, The Post reported.

Musk has also used X as a public control room for the nongovernmental “DOGE” commission he will co-chair, endorsing suggestions from X users such as reforming pentagon spending or cutting foreign aid.

Political figures from both sides of the aisle now turn to Musk’s X account as a way to shape the policy of the incoming administration. He has exchanged posts on the platform with prominent venture capitalists and lawmakers, including Senator Joni Ernst (Republican for Iowa) and Representative Ro Khanna (Democrat for California), who expressed support - or suggested targets - for Musk’s plans to cut government spending.

Earlier this month, New York City council member Vickie Paladino appealed to Musk on X after he responded “wow that’s terrible” to a post in which she criticised Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over a local manslaughter case.

“Elon, you have no idea. We need a lot of help here,” Paladino said. “Please keep us in mind, the GOP has significant opportunity to make gains in the next couple of cycles but we need resources and personnel desperately to capitalise on the momentum that’s been building.”

Musk did not reply but had told advisers before the election that he wanted his super PAC, America PAC, to target progressive district attorneys, such as Bragg, linked to billionaire and prolific liberal donor George Soros.

The same day Paladino appealed to him for help, Musk shared another X user’s screenshot of a Post article reporting that D.C. lobbyists were scrambling to find ways to reach Trump’s self-declared “first buddy.”

Making threats or offering him money would “obviously be silly and ineffective” for anyone seeking his attention, Musk said in his post, which suggested a better way to reach him on political matters.

“I will do my best,” he wrote, “to respond to well-reasoned arguments here on X for serving the best interests of the American people.”

Analysis methodology

Total view counts on posts were measured at more than 48 hours after the post was published, by which time few tweets are still circulating. According to The Post’s analysis of posts, most tweets had received more than 99 percent of their eventual total views after 48 hours, and fewer than 1 percent had less than 85 percent of their eventual total views.

Analysis excludes retweets (which don’t have an independent view count) and replies. Totals through December 12, 2024. In graphics of view counts over time, counts at time stamps between observations are interpolated linearly.

The proportion of Musk’s tweets that related to politics was measured with a keyword-based classification methodology previously used in this analysis from August.

© 2024 , The Washington Post