solarbird | Fascism Watch for 2023-11-16: How Does X/Twitter Work As a Disinformation Fountain?

I’ve said repeatedly that Elon Musk deliberately turned Twitter into X, a far-right disinformation fountain and propaganda machine. But I don’t think people understand what that means, so let me show you how that works, in numbers, with data.

The University of Washington’s Centre for an Informed Public ran a big analysis of news media on X, and what they describe as “the new elites of X,” news-like accounts to whom Musk personally shows favour, and promotes. Some of them are antisemitic sources (see below) and in general they spread a mix of unvetted information, misinformation, and disinformation, along with some actual news.

The “highly subscribed” news media sources examined have roughly 309 million subscribers, all combined.

The “new elites” have a combined 6.7 million subscribers, all combined. They have a little over 1/50th as many subscribers as the “highly subscribed” accounts. 2.2% as many. They are a drop in the bucket, subscriber-wise.

And yet, despite their massively smaller subscriber base, “new elite” disinformation tweets reach far more people than tweets from “highly subscribed” news media. Far more. Disproportionately more. A degree more that functionally requires platform intervention on a large scale.

Let’s look at what that in terms of “impressions” vs. “subscribers,” all from UW’s paper:

“Highly subscribed” news media source tweets got seen on average by 376,000 people. That’s 0.1% of their combined subscriber base.

“New elite” tweets get seen on average by 872,000 people. That’s 13% of their combined subscriber base.

Divide these numbers and you see that X is 130 times more likely to choose to show Musk’s selected disinformation sources than actual news.

Not 130% more likely – 130 times more likely. 13000% more likely. So much more likely that even though they have mere 2.2% as many the followers as the news accounts, their tweets get shown to well over twice as many people – many of whom aren’t even subscribers, thanks to tweet promotion.

When I say staying and fighting is bullshit because you cannot fight the system when the system itself decides what gets seen and Elon personally controls that system? This is what I mean.

Information sources are suppressed; disinformation sources are boosted to Mars. In this environment, it absolutely does not matter what you have to say. No one – except maybe a percentage of your direct followers – will see it.

But by being active there, you absolutely are giving Elon Musk money to keep the machine going. That part’s real, and important.

And that’s why no one should be on X.

Here, have some additional updates:

Emptywheel took a long time to get there, but started agreeing with me in October
Here are a bunch of people talking about why they left, some of which are not even about the information suppression and disinformation amplification.
Elon Musk’s Main Tool for Fighting Disinformation on X Is Making the Problem Worse, Insiders Claim (He’s also appeared to order removal of Community Notes pointing out disinformation on top of everything else.)
Pro-Hitler and Holocaust denier account: X has paid me $3,000 in ad revenue sharing
Elon Musk promotes “stolen election” disinformation directly
Musk’s plan X: keep users in the dark, feed them dung and watch sales mushroom
X will collect biometric data even on encrypted messages
X is still placing ads on fascist pages

Here are some articles on how Elon cooperates with authoritarian regimes to suppress dissent:

How India tamed Twitter and set a global standard for online censorship
Elon personally hosts Russian disinformation site editors in big public Spaces events to help them spread Putin’s disinformation. He also enjoys chatting with top-level Russian government officials about their invasion of Ukraine, promoting them in public, this despite – or possibly because of – massive ongoing Russian efforts to undermine free elections across the world. (See also.)

Here’s Elon boosting antisemitic accounts and disinformation about Israel/Gaza:

Here’s how Musk Twitter doesn’t deliver readers – because, after all, it doesn’t show your links to people:

And a reminder:

Bloomberg – fucking Bloomberg – makes the case to cease all interaction with X.

In short, I am once again saying is that it’s long, long past time to leave the fascist disinformation and propaganda machine once known as Twitter.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.