The Post also lists numerous other ways Musk has created bias within Twitter. In July, 2023, Musk also launched a payment system for influencers whose first beneficiaries skewed hard right. For example, according to this article, Musk paid Andrew Tate thousands of dollars to post on the app.

More recently, there have been repeated allegations of Twitter banning or removing accounts that Musk disagreed with. Musk temporarily banned a journalist for publishing a dossier about JD Vance that had been released as part of an Iranian foreign influence campaign. The journalist had reported on that Iranian sourcing but had felt it was valid to also report out the content. Musk disagreed and the journalist, Ken Klippenstein, was banned. He was reinstated 17 days later after the New York Times reported the Trump campaign had coordinated with Musk to stifle reporting about the dossier.

Musk Promotes Insults, Threats, and Misleading or Dangerous Content

Content moderation is very difficult and all platforms will struggle with it. There are also fine lines between content moderation and censorship. However, Musk himself actively promotes insults, threats, and misinformation and discourages attempts to reduce it, while simultaneously maximizing the engagement of his own account algorithmically . 

• Musk is suing researchers that documented the rise in hate speech on Twitter. 

• After the October 7th invasion into Israel, Musk tweeted that people should follow @WarMonitors and @sentdefender to learn about the war. The recommended sites were shown to have spread fake news and made antisemitic content, including a false report about an explosion near the White House in May of 2023. 

• Musk boosted content from Tenet Media, the account at the center of an alleged Russian covert operation at least 60 times. Even after the indictment of Tenet Media, Twitter left up Tenet’s content. Musk’s amplification of Tenet Media’s content appears to have been unique. NBC News searched for other high-profile individuals who shared Tenet Media content and did not find other CEOs of large tech companies or celebrities who had done so to the same degree. 

• On March 6, 2020 he posted ‘The coronavirus panic is dumb.’

• He was charged with securities fraud for allegedly misleading tweets about Tesla. 

• He baselessly accused a British cave diver instrumental in rescuing a trapped football team of being a “pedo guy” because he, like others, said Musk’s idea to send in a submarine wouldn’t work. Musk then doubled-down on this false smear, and then, according to the Elon’s Spies podcast, hired multiple private investigators to try to dig up dirt on a man that was a global hero.

• In a now-deleted post, Musk questioned why there have been no assassination attempts on President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. 

• In September, 2024 Musk promoted a video of Tucker Carlson interviewing a Nazi-sympathizer. He later deleted that post as well.

• Is Elon Musk taking over abandoned accounts? As part of the Alex Jones bankruptcy case, he is refusing to hand the Twitter account over to whoever buys Infowars, claiming it for himself. 

• In December, 2024 Musk posted “In most cases, the word ‘homeless’ is a lie. It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.” This post was viewed over 33 million times. Around 600,000 people are homeless in the US, including families with children, veterans, and pregnant women, and Musk’s assertions about the cause of this tragedy is incorrect. Most people are homeless because they cannot afford housing, which is why homelessness has increased so dramatically during the housing crisis. Many people that are homeless also struggle with substance use and mental illness, but not all and that is not necessarily the cause of their homelessness, and the vast majority are not violent. This California survey is one of the best studies of who is homeless. Some articles have reported that Musk himself uses illegal drugs and he was sued for allegedly posting online while under the influence of drugs such as cocaine, LSD, and ketamine. Musk himself has admitted to using ketamine for mental health issues.

Musk is deprioritizing other media outlets

The ‘for you’ algorithm prioritizes images and videos, and posts with links go almost unnoticed. This down-ranks posts that highlight and recommend articles for people to read. Musk recently admitted this, posting that ‘lazy linking,’ as he called it, is in fact deprioritized. Business Insider argues that Twitter is no longer useful for finding links to interesting articles to read. The platform also secretly throttled traffic to the New York Times and other sites Musk criticized--adding a five second delay when linking to the Times, Facebook, Reuters, Bluesky, and Substack (after the Post reported on this, the delays were removed).

No, this Isn’t this just creating a sanitized, liberal space and abandoning Twitter to conservative propaganda

Twitter Exodus is not encouraging the abandonment of Twitter for a sanitized, fenced off space.  It is encouraging everyone to leave Twitter for Bluesky, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, people who don’t care about politics, everyone. More immediately, this campaign is encouraging everyone to at a minimum just join Bluesky and follow people on it, but not necessarily leave Twitter.  The goal is to create a critical mass of people that leave Twitter together.  Ultimately, many people will stay on Twitter. But social media sites can quickly trend up and down and become more or less vibrant.  It is possible that if people leave Twitter together in large enough numbers, it will become like Gab--a platform where subcultures talk with each other but do not engage with the broader discourse. As more and more people saying interesting things leave Twitter, more people will become turned off by the platform.