I'm going to talk about his running mate. His running mate, Elon Musk. Elon is on that stage jumping around, skipping like a dipshit on these things. You know it. That guy is literally the richest man [00:00:20] in the world spending millions of dollars to help Donald Trump buy an election. Well, that allegation from Kamala Harris's running mate, Tim Walz, is even truer than we previously knew, [00:00:36] because a new Wall Street Journal investigation into X shows that Elon Musk is very likely manipulating the algorithm on the social media platform in order to amplify pro-Trump content. Now, The Wall Street Journal conducted an experiment [00:00:52] and found that political accounts are dominating feeds, even of X users who showed zero interest in politics. Believe it or not, those people exist. I don't know why they sign up for Twitter or X, but they do. And so to run this experiment, The Wall Street Journal created [00:01:09] 14 X accounts across five states, four of which are in battleground states. The accounts only signaled an interest in nonpolitical subjects. Nonetheless, a majority of the posts in their For You feed were partizan [00:01:25] or related to the presidential election. Fewer than a third of unique posts seen by the journal's accounts were political in nature, but X's algorithm re-upped political posts so often that they accounted for about half of the total posts on the accounts for U feeds. [00:01:46] Now, what was really interesting about their findings is what was amplified by Twitter, what the algorithm seemed to favor. Pro Harris and pro-Trump accounts are not being promoted equally as you can imagine. So let's take a look at this chart. And from this chart, you can see that Kamala Harris's campaign [00:02:05] topped the list of most seen accounts. But ten of the other top 14 most seen leaned far right, including Trump, Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson and, of course, Elon Musk himself. Overall, pro-Trump content appeared about twice as frequently as pro [00:02:25] Harris material twice as frequently. Plus, when the Journal created the accounts, X's first suggestion to nearly all the accounts was to follow Elon Musk, who appeared along with his bio and an indication [00:02:41] that he is backing Trump for president. His post posts also appeared at the top of the journal's or the Journal accounts for you feeds more than any other user, including a video clip posted October 17th of him campaigning alongside Trump served [00:02:57] first to each of the journals accounts. So some really interesting results here. I have some more details about what their investigation found. I have to say, I am not surprised by these results whatsoever, just based on what I personally have experienced using the social media platform. [00:03:15] I've noticed that since Elon Musk has taken control of it since he bought Twitter, turned it into X, you know, the for you feed is just full of people that of course I don't even follow people I have no interest in following. And most of the messaging is right wing pro-Trump messaging. [00:03:31] So I'll give you the tiniest little caveat here. And then I'll tell you my experience, and then I'll cry and cry about election interference. Oh, I'm sorry, that's what Republicans do. So we'll get to that part of it in a second. So in my experience, whenever I do a pro, like a post that's I never do [00:03:49] a pro-Trump post, but one that criticizes Kamala Harris or is fair in any way. - It takes off like a rocket. - Yeah, I've noticed that too. Yeah. And if I do one criticizing Trump for nothing. Okay, so now the caveat is Democrats don't support their own. [00:04:07] And and the left is so divided. The idea of like reposting something of mine is probably an anathema to an establishment Democrat or an extreme leftist or etc. So by the end they're all like, okay, no, just promote mine, mine, mine. [00:04:24] But I don't want to promote anybody else's. Right. So that's how the left is. Where is the right? If they see something that they like, oh, repost, repost, repost that. That is an excellent point that I hadn't considered, but is absolutely true. What I've noticed is conservatives or Trump supporters in particular, are really [00:04:43] good at cross promotion and uplifting other Trump supporters on these platforms. I mean, of course, Trump supporters are not a monolith, but when it comes to overall generalized pro-Trump messaging. [00:04:58] They tend to retweet each other and all of that. So you're right. - Yeah. - So that's your one caveat. But the numbers are so stark. So first of all, they give away the game in the content before you even get to partizanship. So you know, half none of the accounts they signed up for [00:05:16] had anything to do with politics. They did not check off politics. I like baseball, I like running, I like crafts, things like that. Right. And half the content they got served was political anyway. Why? I mean, if you're running an algorithm that wants to create engagement and keep those people there, you would give them stories about baseball [00:05:33] and running and crafts. You wouldn't give them political things unless you had an agenda and 50% was political. That's an agenda. Okay. And then when you go to the political stuff and it's twice as much right wingers as left wingers that twice, it's not like 5% more or 15% more. [00:05:50] It's twice as much. Okay. So that's a giant number. And then the one last thing that you might not recognize not being, you know, in the industry. The three out of the four for left leaning was official Kamala Harris accounts [00:06:06] only Ron Filipowski was a guy, but he puts up a lot of videos as understandable. I think that's totally organic, right? But the guys on the right wing side were other hosts because if you drive them there, then they continue to amplify going forward because if they wind up [00:06:22] following Benny Johnson, they're not just going to get one tweet that's pro-Trump. They're going to get hundreds of pro-Trump tweets. Right. So if you push them towards online right wing media, you're going to even amplify more. That's why there's nothing to left wing media, only to Kamala Harris accounts. [00:06:40] And that and those are all temporary. Remember after the election, especially if she loses, those go into the dustbin of history and those mega powerful right wing accounts continue to put out propaganda to the end of time. Look, Elon, just admit it. You bought the platform and you want it to serve your own interests, [00:06:58] so you're rigging it and it's not you're not being subtle about it. So are you going to keep lying or are you going to be honest? Yeah, I'm rigging it. Yeah. Of course I want Trump to win because he let me he promised me that I could run the government and that way I'm going to run it. So I make even more money and I totally rip you guys off. [00:07:15] - Just say it. - So I have two points I want to make. One of the points is going to upset everybody who despises Trump, because we're not supposed to justify any of this. And I don't like this. Right. But I do want to note that this isn't really different from other wealthy [00:07:33] owners of media platforms, especially in recent days where the owner of the platform can just decide unilaterally. I'm not going to allow my editorial board to endorse the candidate that they would like to endorse. The other point I want to make is going to upset Trump supporters, but it is true. [00:07:53] I'm old enough to remember individuals like Vivek Ramaswamy, arguing that the 2020 election was in fact stolen, and his argument is that it wasn't it wasn't stolen because of widespread voter fraud. No, no, no. It was stolen because of election interference with Twitter [00:08:12] suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story. That is the argument that they make. And they make it over and over again. So can Democrats make that same argument now that there's election interference and should Trump win? Well, we need to fight to reverse the results of that election. [00:08:30] Democrats might even consider rioting in the nation's capital because there was election interference. - Yeah. - Look, the whole thing, man. Look, before Facebook de-emphasized news, if you went to look at their top ten posts in the politics section or the news section almost every day, [00:08:48] either eight, 9 or 10 out of ten were right wing sites. So Facebook totally leaning right wing now. Twitter leaning 100%. Right wing. So all these platforms lean right wing. The one time that the ex before Twitter. [00:09:05] Elon Musk bought it didn't put up the Elon Musk. The Hunter Biden laptop story. And the Republicans are like that one time against us 100 times in our favor. One time election against oh my God, election interference. So okay, guys, if that was election interference and it's [00:09:21] not just Vivek who made that case. JD Vance makes that case, right? And he made that case in a in an interview recently. So is this election interference? Clearly Elon is rigging it on behalf of Donald Trump. And it's not complicated to see why he's his top one of his top donors. [00:09:37] And he and Trump said I'm now in favor of electric vehicles because of Elon Musk. And I'm going to let Elon decide to do audit the entire government, have complete control over the audit of the government. That is insanity. [00:09:54] That gives enormous power to a mega billionaire donor of Donald Trump. So is this election interference? And can Kamala Harris say, I'm not certifying the election? This isn't my logic. It's idiotic logic of That's Trump's, Vance's, Vivek's, etc.. [00:10:09] According to your own dumbass logic, that's it. Kamala shouldn't certify the election if she loses. Just kick it back. Do some fake electors just like Trump did and go, oh, what what what? X discriminated against me. That's it. I'm now the president. So what are you going to do now? So look, I think it's important to consider these dumb arguments [00:10:30] have a negative impact on our democratic process overall, because the dumb excuses that one side makes will be exploited by the other side. Okay. So I mean, there's Democrats are so weak. No, I don't. Look, I don't think Democrats are going to argue that this is literally [00:10:48] election interference. But I do think that there is a problem with, first of all, most Americans not trusting our news media for good reason, right? The news media hasn't done its job, hasn't informed the public, has hid the ball or amplified certain campaigns, omitted information that isn't necessarily [00:11:09] favorable to their favorite politicians. This is a widespread issue in media overall. And so as more and more Americans turn to social media in order to get informed. Yeah, this is an even bigger problem because who can you trust? This is why. Look, guys, it's so important to diversify your sources. [00:11:28] Don't simply get all of your information from one source. You will be uninformed if you do so. If you're only relying on Twitter or TikTok or just the Washington Post or just the New York Times, you're actually doing yourself a disservice. You have to consider how the business model impacts [00:11:46] the journalism you're consuming. And with that in mind, again, diversify your sources. All right, so just a few more details. So when the Journal created Wall Street Journal created its bot accounts. I want to talk about some specific experiments [00:12:02] or instances that they noticed. So one of their bots was located in Pennsylvania and indicated interest in baseball, painting, and parenting. But in one session, X almost immediately served it. Political posts, including a stream of a Trump rally, [00:12:19] a post from pro-Trump troll, cat turd two. Oh, he's got a second account now. Okay. Cat turd two. Reading if that cringe dingbat zero votes airhead Kamala Harris is able to cheat enough to win the presidency. [00:12:36] The USA is over. So those are the kinds of things that people will get served up, even when they make it abundantly clear that they're not interested in political content at all. That's the one. The third one is the one that they served up endlessly, right? The one calling Kamala Harris a dingbat. And obviously you should vote against her, etc.. [00:12:53] By the way, that cat turd coward is the only conservative that said they would show up to debate and didn't. And Pro Kamala stuff popped up too. But overall, the majority of the political posts that X boosted were from conservative figures and pro-Trump accounts. [00:13:09] So a Washington Post analysis came to similar conclusions, finding that nearly all of the 33 tweets with more than 20 million views since last summer, came from Republicans. The Republicans have also seen huge spikes in follower counts over the Democrats, [00:13:25] and Republican candidates are outspending Democrats on the platform 3 to 1. So there's some money involved as well. There's, you know, advertising on Twitter as you can imagine. So just something to keep in mind as you're informing yourselves for this election. [00:13:42] Obviously don't rely on one source, certainly don't rely on one social media platform or the other. And I just realized why the Kamala Harris accounts might be at the top. Because they're paying to get at the top. That's how you advertise on on Twitter. So if they weren't paying an arm and a leg to Elon Musk, there'd be [00:14:01] no left wing accounts, in the top ten. So it's massive cheating. But guys, it doesn't mean that you're cheating in the elections. So you play the obstacle course that you have in front of you. There's no crying in politics. So if Kamala Harris loses, she can't say, oh, well, Twitter was mean to me. [00:14:19] Yeah, it was owned by a right wing donor, Donald Trump. Of course it was mean to you, right? So you have to figure out how to get past that and win. You mean, what did I say? - You said Donald Trump. - Sorry. Yeah. No, I said, right wing billionaire donor of Donald Trump. Oh. Got it. Yeah. [00:14:35] And so and if you think Elon Musk is, like, neutral or are you kidding? I mean, the guy is giving tens of millions of dollars to Donald Trump, right? So no, he wants Trump to win and God knows what bitcoin scam they're going to do. So look guys okay. And by the way the right wing you got to understand something. [00:14:52] You might be happy about this. Yay! We're cheating now. Oh, you guys had it coming. That's always their excuse. Anyways, I'm not doing Bitcoin. A lot of left wingers aren't doing it. We're not giving money to Donald Trump. We're not giving money to all these dumb ass things [00:15:08] where the Golden shoes and the $60 Bibles and all that stuff you guys are. You're the mark. You're the mark. Not just for Donald Trump, for Elon Musk. Oh by this. Oh everybody rushes. Oh I already sold it. Haha okay. But go ahead get manipulated. [00:15:24] See how you like it. Thanks for watching The Young Turks. Really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. [00:15:40] But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.