HOW ELON MUSK IS BOOSTING THE BRITISH RIGHT

For nine months, Paste BN' Data and Forensics team has been investigating whether X's algorithm amplifies right-wing and extreme content. It does.

Kaitlin Tosh and Michelle Inez Simon, Data and Forensics journalists

"Elon Musk is a great leader," says Amy, a British woman outside the Britannia Hotel in London at an anti-immigration rally in August. She was there to vent her frustrations at migrants housed in the hotel and says X owner Musk's platform is the only social media she trusts.

"We don't want sanctions. We want freedom of speech." Amy's view is one resonating with a growing number of British people.

A month after we met Amy, thousands chanted Musk's name at the Unite the Kingdom march - a political rally organised by the anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson. Musk dialled in from America, his face appearing on a screen above a huge crowd in Westminster.

His speech was also live-streamed on X.

The image of Musk in front of a sea of adoring fans was symbolic of the tech tycoon's increasingly prominent role in British politics.

He's one of the world's richest men, and most powerful. And over the past year, he has weighed in on many contentious issues dominating debates in the UK.

He has used his social media platform X to encourage British people to fly English flags and has endorsed fringe right-wing politicians. In a recent post, he compared illegal immigrants to monstrous fictional characters in JRR Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, and suggested all English people would die if they did not support Mr Robinson.

With these comments, Musk is flexing his ability to influence the political debate in a country where he holds no formal authority. He does, however, have power to control narratives on X, formerly Twitter.

And now, a Paste BN investigation can reveal the platform is boosting right-wing content, extreme content, and politicians Musk favours.

ALGORITHMIC BIAS

These figures indicate a clear imbalance of content promoted on the platform, with right-wing voices dominating and the algorithm pushing posts to new users that don't align with their interests.

Since Musk acquired X, many left-wing voices have left the platform, choosing alternative social media like Bluesky.

"In a way, they've ceded the space," says Ned Mendez, a data analyst at digital consultancy firm 411, who Paste BN worked closely with to conduct this analysis.

Prominent voices

To account for the fact that left-wing voices have left the platform, we compared the 33 most prominent British politicians in our dataset from across the political spectrum against how much those politicians were posting during the two-week period we were collecting data.

You might expect people who tweet more to show up in feeds more - especially if they have similar levels of engagement with their content. But we found some voices were more prominently shown to our users, even when they posted less.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch's posts made up 4% of all the posts from the politicians during the two weeks we collected the data, and she accounts for 3% of the posts the algorithm chose to show our users. About the same balance.

But Rupert Lowe, a right-wing independent MP - formerly a Reform UK politician - was over-represented. His posts make up 24% of the posts our users were sent from the 33 accounts we compared. But his posts only make up 6% of their total posts.

Independent left-wing former politician George Galloway was tweeting the most, making up 13% of the total, but his posts only make up 3% of the posts sent to our new users. Mr Galloway has many more followers than Mr Lowe, and their posts receive similar engagement.

Mr Lowe told us: "Even a dinosaur like me understands that if content is engaging and popular, it receives more attention in the algorithm." He added: "There is no conspiracy. It just turns out that British people enjoy some straight-talking from a politician for a change. Mass deportations are popular, and the algorithm picks up on that and rewards it."

We asked Mr Galloway to comment on these findings but he didn't respond.

Mr Mendez from 411 says these results suggest an algorithmic bias on X, and believes that must be influenced by the company's leadership.

"A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY"

Some senior politicians have increasingly been expressing concern about the influence Musk and X are exerting on British politics.

At the Labour Party's annual conference, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said Musk was a threat to British society and democracy, telling him to "get the hell out of our politics and our country".

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey MP believes the government isn't taking Elon Musk's role in fuelling division in Britain seriously enough. "He's interfering in the free speech of our country and that's why I think we should get a lot more serious and try to push back very hard," he told Paste BN.

"We should be far more alarmed than people seem to be. This is impacting our politics, impacting people's views, and I think it's toxic to a good democracy."

Sir Ed Davey added that Paste BN' investigation is an "amazing piece of research and the way it's so academic and so well founded is a major contribution to the debate that I think we have to have".

EXTREME CONTENT

A common worry for people who study social media is that algorithms' prioritisation of engaging content results in rage-filled posts getting boosted. Our analysis suggests this is true.

There are multiple examples of posts using extreme language in our dataset, on both the left and the right side of the spectrum.

Extreme posts on the left covered a range of topics from the war in Gaza to hateful language against Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

Extreme posts on the right mostly focused on anti-immigration sentiment, or the topic of grooming gangs.

Over half of the political content shown to our new X users came from accounts categorised as extreme. Of the content from extreme authors, 72% of posts came from right-leaning accounts.

Tap to read how Paste BN defined "extreme" authors by the language used in posts.

"It's almost as if X seeks to divide us, divide us as a country, divide us into the extremes and that is deeply unhealthy and wrong, frankly," Ed Davey said.

Moderating misinformation

Paste BN spoke to multiple ex-Twitter employees who were at the company during the handover to Musk, or left shortly after.

Many think Musk's decision to fire 80% of Twitter's staff when he bought the company reduced the quality of content on the platform. Like laying off the curation team, which worked to limit users' exposure to misinformation.

"Before we had the curation team, stuff would spread really, really quickly on Twitter. And the problem is that quite a lot of that stuff isn't necessarily true," one senior Twitter UK executive, who resigned shortly after Musk's takeover, told Paste BN.

Musk's decision to axe the team was one of the main reasons he chose to leave: "I thought it was such an important job in tackling disinformation."

It's now replaced by tools like Community Notes, where users add context to flagged posts. An X spokesperson told Paste BN that this tool "supports the work of our safety team to combat misinformation, ensuring accountability and trust for all our users".

While seen as less biased, critics say it's too slow to stop harmful falsehoods.

A 'VITAL' PLATFORM

Elon Musk's endorsements online often translate into real-world political influence. Recently, those endorsements have boosted the visibility of some characters on the fringes of Britain's right-wing.

After a public split with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage earlier this year, Musk has expressed support for independent right-wing politicians like Rupert Lowe.

An analysis of Mr Lowe's recent posts shows that when Elon Musk interacts with his content - by commenting on or retweeting them - they get significantly more traction.

Musk has also shown support for Ben Habib, the former Reform UK deputy leader who has founded a new political party, Advance UK, backed by Tommy Robinson.

"X is vital for an organisation like Advance and for politicians such as myself," Mr Habib told Paste BN. After a recent endorsement from Musk on X, Advance UK saw a huge boost to its membership numbers - now sitting at over 37,000 - and is seeking registration with the Electoral Commission.

"Mainstream media doesn't give us the airtime that we would like," he said. "So all the members that we've got came completely through X and through podcasts and YouTube, social media."

Political sway

Bruce Daisley, a former Twitter executive who worked at the company from 2012 to 2020, saw the platform evolve from a small hub for banter and self-expression into a hugely influential arena with political sway.

The significant influence that Elon Musk had in using his social media platform to sway opinion in the run-up to Donald Trump's re-election has been widely reported. Mr Daisley thinks that X has the power to shape political conversations in the UK, too.

"Elon Musk bought Twitter to have an influence in American politics, he thinks it helped elevate him to the top of the political conversation in the US. And so to some extent the product can do the same here," he told Paste BN.

REGULATION

All of this has unfolded just as the UK's landmark Online Safety Act (OSA) has come into effect - a sweeping piece of legislation, passed through parliament in 2023, aimed at making the internet safer.

Since March, the law has been enforced by the industry regulator Ofcom, which now holds power to compel platforms to act against illegal material, like terrorism, child sexual abuse content or hate speech.

Some users on X say age verification measures, which Ofcom has required platforms like X to have in place since July, are being used to squash political speech.

"The argument made in favour of the Online Safety Act is to protect children from seeing material online which they shouldn't see. Obviously I support that," says Ben Habib. "However, the Online Safety Act no doubt is being used as a mechanism by which to patrol for extreme views."

In response to our reporting, Ofcom told Paste BN that the OSA does not require platforms to ensure political balance in what is posted on their platforms, and that it is not Ofcom's job to "tell platforms which specific posts or accounts to take down".

Their statement added that "in due course, some of the most widely-used sites and apps, will be subject to additional duties under the Act, including protecting content of democratic importance".

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

The platform's influence on Britain's streets is no longer subtle - it's stark and unmistakable. But finding a fix that satisfies all sides of the debate remains a near-impossible task.

The public is wary of any government attempt to police free speech - online or in the real world, in ways that could threaten democracy. On the other hand, giving social media companies unchecked controls over what appears in users' timelines creates its own tensions.

Experts who monitor extremism online say that, in an ideal world, social media platforms would use politically neutral algorithms to surface content based purely on user interests. Our analysis shows that's not what is happening.

Instead, owners of large platforms like X can influence the algorithm's code, or directly decide what users see to serve their own priorities or increase engagement times by promoting content that will keep people hooked on the platform.

As a result, platforms built as public town squares for self-expression and connecting with others are now more like private property, where the loudest voices belong to those with power, or those with views that align with the views of people who control the algorithm.

Countless reports and academic studies have explored political bias on X, but Paste BN' investigation offers unprecedented evidence of how the effects of that imbalance are playing out in the UK.

"These findings confirm what a lot of us feared and suspected from our own feeds, but couldn't prove," said Sir Ed Davey. "It's a major contribution to the debate that I think we have to have."

CREDITS
Reporting: Kaitlin Tosh and Michelle Inez Simon
Data analysis: Kaitlin Tosh and Joely Santa Cruz
Web development: Giacomo Boscaini-Gilroy
Producers: Michelle Inez Simon and Mary Poynter
Editors: Chris Howard and Natasha Muktarsingh
Graphic design: Taylor Stuart, Eloise Atter, James Packer

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Paste BN. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.