Depending on how you use the internet, you may already have an idea of who will win the US election.
When I opened X this morning, shortly before the polls opened, three of the top eight posts on my 'For You' feed were from Elon Musk, all loudly promoting Donald Trump.
His posts had received more than 100 million views, millions of likes and hundreds of thousands of shares, with one of his posts proclaiming "Red wave next-level LFG [let's fucking go]".
Meanwhile, over on Reddit, four of the top eight posts on reddit.com/r/all – the page displaying the most popular posts on the site – were either anti-Republican or pro-Democrat. (All other posts on the two sites were either sports news or apolitical memes.)
Facebook, Instagram and Threads appear to have avoided any major political bias, largely because Meta decided to limit content on its platforms that is "likely to mention governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and/or society at large".
This new policy, which was introduced earlier this year, came after Mark Zuckerberg faced numerous legal challenges and widespread outrage over Facebook's role in spreading misinformation and driving polarisation in the 2016 and 2020 US elections.
It is a lesson that Musk, who has only owned X since 2022, is yet to heed.
I don't follow him on X, or ever interact with his posts, but his prevalence on my feed is not an accident. It may even be a deliberate act of manipulation or political sabotage.
This week, two researchers from Australia found evidence that the world's richest person has tweaked X's algorithm in order to artificially boost his pro-Trump posts.
In a study of more than 56,000 posts from various high-profile political accounts on the platform, the academics revealed that Musk's posts have exhibited "distinct and elevated engagement patterns compared to other accounts".
The researchers were even able to pin the boost in views and likes to a single date: 13 July. This was the same date that Trump was targeted by an assassination attempt, which prompted Musk to publicly back the Republican candidate for the first time.
The chart below shows just how sudden and severe the increase in exposure to Musk's tweets was after this date, with the researchers warning that the pattern indicates "an algorithmic shift" that massively favoured Musk's account.
The study concluded that more research is needed in order to understand the impact of this algorithmic bias. But it once again illustrates the dangers of social media when it comes to shaping public discourse and interfering with democracy – especially when these platforms are under the control of just a handful of billionaires.
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