They
Criticized Musk on X. Then Their Reach Collapsed.
By Stuart A.
Thompson April 23, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/23/business/elon-musk-x-suppression-laura-loomer.html
Anastasia
Maria Loupis runs a popular account on X that used to receive hundreds of
thousands of views each day for her far-right commentary, conspiracy theories
and antisemitic statements.
In late
December, she criticized Elon Musk, the site’s owner, over his support for visa
programs that many of President Trump’s supporters despise.
Her reach
plummeted on X and never recovered.
When Mr.
Musk purchased X in 2022, he promised to create a free speech haven and named
himself a “free speech absolutist.”
Critics
still feared that Mr. Musk would use his control of the app to pick and choose
his favorites, amplifying voices he admired while suppressing people or topics
he loathed.
The New York
Times found three users on X who feuded with Mr. Musk in December only to see
their reach on the social platform practically vanish overnight. The accounts
are the starkest signs yet that Mr. Musk or others at the company have the
power to punish critics and that they may be willing to use it, startling free
speech advocates who hoped that the billionaire would be their champion.
Concerns
about Mr. Musk’s influence have grown alongside his political ambitions as one
of President Trump’s closest allies. He has also set his sights on boosting
far-right politics across the world.
“This is
working against the type of environment that he claimed he wanted to build,”
said Ari Cohn, the lead counsel for technology policy at the Foundation for
Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group. “Don’t sit here
and cloak yourself in the First Amendment and free speech, and then do things
like that.”
It is not
clear what precisely happened to the three accounts that feuded with Mr. Musk
in late December. Dozens of other users also said their accounts were impacted
after criticizing the billionaire, but The Times reviewed data for those
accounts and did not find clear evidence that their visibility was severely
impacted. As with any social network, the algorithms that control a post’s
distribution — and the data that fuels those decisions — are impossible for
outsiders to scrutinize.
Mr. Musk has
offered several clues to what happened, writing on X amid the feud that if
powerful accounts blocked or muted others, their reach would be sharply
limited. (Mr. Musk is the most popular user on X with more than 219 million
followers, so his actions to block or mute users could hold significant sway.)
He also suggested that he might have kicked some users off X’s premium program,
which boosts the visibility of paying subscribers. Doing so would effectively
curtail their reach and prevent them from making money on X.
A spokesman
for X declined to comment. In a post about its moderation policies, the company
wrote that it had several tools to limit the visibility of posts or users, but
that it “does not block, limit, or remove content based on an individual’s
views or opinions.”
Like Ms.
Loupis, Laura Loomer is used to picking fights on X as a far-right influencer
who has gained over a million followers spreading falsehoods, conspiracy
theories and racism, branding herself as an unflinching ally of Mr. Trump. But
things changed when she turned her sights on Mr. Musk in December, writing that
he was “exposed” over his support for the visa programs.
“Loomer is
looking for attention,” Mr. Musk wrote about her. “Ignore.”
Almost
immediately, her reach on the platform dropped. It stayed that way for weeks
until her posts started gaining traction again — just as Mr. Musk started
interacting with her posts once more.
Ms. Loomer
also briefly lost access to X Premium after feuding with Mr. Musk, which might
have explained the declining popularity of her posts. But a Times analysis
found no clear relationship between the popularity of her posts and when she
was removed from and reinstated to the program.
“Thank you
very much @elonmusk for giving me back my monetization tonight,” she wrote on X
in February.
“You’re
welcome,” Mr. Musk replied.
When Ms.
Loomer lost her access to X Premium, she also lost the ability to earn money
from her paid subscribers and from X’s revenue program, which shares ad dollars
with premium users. She estimated in an interview that she lost about $50,000
from X during the period when her account was suppressed.
“I think
it’s wrong to say it’s a free speech platform and then shut off people’s
ability to monetize,” Ms. Loomer said.
Ms. Loupis
and Ms. Loomer contributed to a torrent of criticism against Mr. Musk over his
position on visas for skilled workers. Many Trump supporters with
anti-immigrant views want such programs shuttered, while Mr. Musk and other
tech leaders support them.
While views
on Ms. Loomer’s posts returned to their previous highs, Ms. Loupis opened a
second account on X in a bid to circumvent any suppression against her. Despite
having a fraction of the followers, posts on her new account are getting more
views than those posted to her original account. She wrote in January that she
planned to sue Mr. Musk and X.
“It has
turned out to be all lies from him,” said Ms. Loupis in an interview from
Denmark. “It's disappointing because we supported him and believed in him very,
very much."
Mr. Musk has
been accused of abusing his control over X before, though not in this exact
way. A group of prominent journalists were suddenly suspended in 2022. Mr. Musk
suggested at the time that they had violated the site’s privacy rules by
posting personal information, but did not elaborate. Their accounts were later
reinstated without explanation.
The third
user The Times identified was Owen Shroyer, a far-right activist and host of a
show on Infowars, the streaming platform home to many conspiracy theorists. He
joined the feud about visas on Dec. 26, mocking jobs provided to visa holders.
His reach has been down since. Like Ms. Loomer, Mr. Shroyer briefly lost access
to X Premium.
Mr. Shroyer
found that his followers would see his posts if they were online when he posted
them. But if they logged in later, they would never see them in their feeds.
“My theory
is that someone is manipulating reach based off of personal, political or issue
based bias,” Mr. Shroyer said in an email, adding that X has provided no
explanation.
Mr. Shroyer
stopped short of blaming Mr. Musk directly, writing instead that “some of the
powers he has delegated could be being abused.”
X offers few
tools to monitor the social network, and Mr. Musk has disabled some features
that had allowed researchers to monitor changes on the platform. To identify
these three accounts, The Times used a service that collects data from X to
analyze views for dozens of users involved in various feuds with Mr. Musk for
changes in their daily impressions.
Many others
who criticized Mr. Musk have claimed they were quietly suppressed on the
platform, a tactic known as shadowbanning or ghost banning. Though The Times
did not identify other accounts that were artificially suppressed, such changes
would be difficult to spot if users did not post frequently, or did not have
many popular posts.
“If he did
it to small accounts, nobody would notice,” said Ms. Loupis, who has more than
one million followers on her original account. “But when he starts doing it to
really, really big influencers with millions of followers, everybody notices.”
Before Mr.
Musk bought the platform in 2022, when it was known as Twitter, many right-wing
users had criticized the company for shadowbanning. Mr. Musk wrote in November
last year that “there is no shadowbanning anymore.” At the same time, he has
said that he believes in “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” meaning
that the platform would not bar people for hateful content but would make it
harder to find such content.
“There will
always be critics,” Mr. Musk wrote in February last year. “What is perhaps
notable is that I don’t attempt to silence them even on a platform that I own.”
Ken
Bensinger contributed reporting.
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