The Post also lists numerous other ways Musk has created bias within Twitter. In July, 2023, Musk 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.

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. Just this threat of Twitter suspension is enough to create a conflict of interest for any journalist that relies on Twitter professionally—they know that if they go against Musk’s wishing they could lose their account and their vital following.

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.

• On January 20th, at the Presidential Inauguration, Musk made a salute that looked troublingly like a Nazi salute. Many individuals expressed concern, including the Anti-Defamation League. Musk responded with the following post making light of the Holocaust, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of time. He did not apologize for making the gesture or make any statements condemning fascism or Nazism. Musk has publicly supported the far right AfD party in Germany, including hosting an interview on X with Alice Weidel, AfD leader. Figures in the party have been accused of using Nazi slogans in speeches and downplaying the Holocaust.

• In September of 2024, Elon Musk posted on X that the head of the FAA needed to resign. This was after a feud between the two had played out on Twitter. The feud was instigated by fines that the FAA had imposed on Starlink and SpaceX. Michael Whitaker, the FAA Director, had stated in a House hearing that the FAA’s civil penalties were “the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters.” Whitaker resigned on the day of President Trump’s inauguration. Ten days after Whitaker resigned, the Flight 5342 crashed into a Blackhawk helicopter in Washington D.C., killing all 67 passengers. This is the most deadly plain crash in the US since 2001, and the FAA confronted it without a director. This is an example of how Musk’s personal opinions and interests are magnified on X and can have very serious real world repercussions.

Musk is deprioritizing and attacking media outlets on X

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).

Musk has also frequently attacked journalists and media outlets. After journalists reported on the previous statements of a DOGE staff member—he had previously posted "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity” and “Normalize Indian hate”—Musk attacked the journalists for reporting this information. Musk equated this reporting to ‘doxxing,’ asserted that the people identifying this behavior and the name of the staff member had ‘committed a crime,’ and encouraged their prosecution. The New York Times reported about this incident in the article “How Elon Musk and the Right Are Trying to Recast Reporting as ‘Doxxing.”

Musk has also attacked media outlets in ways that directly undercut their revenue. After people on X developed a conspiracy story that DOGE’s USAID cuts were the cause of Politico financial problems, Musk directed that conspiracy theory towards attacking the fact that many government agencies subscribe to Politico Pro to get news. Musk had the Federal government cancel these subscriptions, causing Politico to lose millions in revenue, and alleged on X that he was canceling fraudulent contracts. These actions are another direct indication that Musk does not value journalism particularly journalism that disagrees with him and will look for opportunities to weaken it. Vox reported about this incident in the article “What a wild conspiracy theory about Politico tells us about how Trump governs.”

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

TwitterTakedown 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.  

Is Twitter safe for journalists or anyone opposed to Musk?

The podcast Elon’s Spies interviews multiple people who have been spied on at great lengths by Musk and who pose the very troubling question of whether their personal direct messages on Twitter could be compromised by Musk. This is not a question that can be answered with any certainty at this point, but Musk’s history of spying on his enemies is a legitimate cause for concern. Musk has touted how far he will go to oppose his own enemies, posting on X “there's a "large graveyard filled with my enemies. I do not wish to add to it, but will if given no choice." While Twitter rolled out some message encryption capacity in 2023, it is only for paying accounts and has technological limitations. It is hypothetically possible for Musk to access direct messages or scrape these messages to train his AI models.