Since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, it has often seemed that he transformed a platform that favored progressives into one that bolstered the right instead.

And in the years after that purchase, the right’s political fortunes improved dramatically. The woke era came to a close, conservatives gained the upper hand in the culture war, and President Donald Trump returned to power while Democrats and leftists became disillusioned and dispirited. A mood of right-wing triumph pervaded the platform Musk renamed X.

Key takeaways

• Elon Musk’s changes at X (such as rolling back content moderation policies and creator payouts), plus progressives’ departure, have turned it into a platform where the right mainly argues with the extreme right.
• Now, even right-wingers like Christopher Rufo are perturbed by how popular bigotry and conspiracy theories are becoming on X, as feuds and controversies erupt there and shake the GOP.
• Meanwhile, the Trump administration remains obsessed with pandering to the online right, putting them out of touch with ordinary voters and endangering the multiracial MAGA 2.0 coalition.

But in recent months, X has lost its ability to unite the right. Instead, it’s increasingly the place where Trump supporters turn on each other.

Intense and bitter public feuds have broken out over such topics as Israel, antisemitism, bigotry against Indian Americans, and whether people whose ancestors came to the US more recently should be considered less authentically American. Conspiracy theories are running rampant, with many targeting the Trump administration itself.

Importantly, much of this is happening because of X. That is: the changes to the platform’s policies and culture that have been made under Musk’s ownership have altered the norms of what it’s acceptable for right-wingers to say, and have incentivized a race to the bottom for engagement. It turns out that once guardrails against bigotry and misinformation are removed, there’s a huge audience-side “demand” on the right for both.

“On the right, the public mind is now shaped by the X algorithm,” right-wing activist and X power-user Christopher Rufo recently wrote, arguing that X has usurped the role formerly held by Fox News. But, he went on, “the platform’s algorithm seems increasingly hijacked by bad actors who peddle baseless conspiracies” for “clicks, dollars, and shares.”

Meanwhile, as X grows more extreme and disconnected from reality, top Trump officials remain obsessed with pandering to its user base — focused on throwing........

© Vox