One reason the Media Research Center backed away from its usual nonstop Musk-fluffing over the summer is that it has apparently decided that Twitter/X is not right-wing enough for its satisfaction. Christian Baldwin and Joseph Vazquez spent a July 15 post doing a so-called “study” complaining that Democratic politicians weren’t being downgraded enough by Musk as they hoped he would:
Elon Musk has made strides to turn X (formerly Twitter) into a free speech platform but there are still remnants of the Old Twitter censorship regime and they are interfering in the 2024 election. It now appears that X is actively boosting content posted by Democrat congressional members’ accounts, while simultaneously de-amplifying their GOP counterparts in the middle of an election year.
[…]Elon Musk has been outspoken about his intention to make X the preeminent digital town square and a platform free of censorship and political interference. But new evidence suggests a radical remnant within the ranks of Musk’s company is side-swiping his free-speech vision by resurrecting the infamous censorship techniques of Old Twitter.
MRC Free Speech America researchers discovered that X is actively boosting content posted by Democrat [sic] congressional members’ accounts, while simultaneously de-amplifying their GOP counterparts during an election year.
The X algorithm assigns each account a “visibility score” on a scale of 0-100. Each of these scores determines which accounts the platform boosts and which it de-boosts, according to X’s AI chatbot, Grok. MRC’s analysts prompted Grok to examine the social media platform’s algorithm — which Musk open-sourced in 2023 in a display of transparency — to calculate the visibility scores for all members of Congress. The algorithm, per Grok, uses four core metrics, also based on a 0-100 scale, to calculate the overall visibility score. The results are in: X’s algorithm overwhelmingly favors the left.
Tilting the scales in favor of Democrats is well-trodden ground for the company, but it is now generally thought of as a thing of the past. These results suggest, however, a continued conflict within X about which policies should guide its operations.
Baldwin and Vazquez offer no evidence that those scores don’t accurately reflect reality, or that what they call “certain holdover employees loyal to the prior censorship regime” are solely responsible for this. Also, Twitter/X making its code open source was a red herring to hide the fact that at the same time, it blocked access to its API tool without paying a hefty fee, demonstrating that Musk doesn’t actually care about transparency. Still, they have their conspiracy theory, and they’re going to run with it:
On one side is Musk and his new approach to technology (like Grok and his commitment to algorithmic transparency); on the other side are legacy algorithms and certain holdover employees loyal to the prior censorship regime.
“I suspect the radical lefties at X are helping their radical besties in Congress, or it could be that the ghosts of Jack Dorsey are still plaguing the algorithm. Either way, it appears to be an inside job,” said MRC Vice President for Free Speech America Dan Schneider in response to our findings. He added, “It might make more sense if the moderates got treated the best by the algorithm, but they don’t. X assigns much better scores to the hard left than it assigns to moderates, and treats moderates better than conservatives. The X continuum consistently favors the left.”
But none of this is based on hard, verified data — Baldwin and Vazquez are using prompts they fed into Twitter/X’s Grok artificial intelligence engine:
MRC researchers have used Grok to good effect. Musk’s AI platform spelled out exactly how the algorithm effectuates its political favoritism.
Grok revealed that X scored accounts across four separate categories, each on a scale 0-100.
The “Mass Appeal” category refers to an account’s diversity of followers. The “Reputation” category refers to an account’s alleged credibility. The “Toxicity” category refers to an account’s “offensiveness” or perceived “harmfulness.” Lastly, the “Follower” category references an account’s ability to retain followers. Each category is weighted differently to come up with a total final score that determines which accounts X boosts and which it deboosts.
MRC researchers prompted Grok with eight tests between July 1 and July 2 to assess how the platform weighted each of the metrics to determine a congressional member’s final visibility score. The four categories were weighted as follows: Mass Appeal (38 percent), Reputation (30 percent), Toxicity (21 percent), and Follow (11 percent).
Across all four categories, X on average consistently rated Democrat members of Congress better than members of the GOP.
But Baldwin and Vazquez give us no reason to trust Grok’s findings. Like all AI engines, it is prone to hallucinations, and it has been caught spreading disinformation in response to political queries. They offer no evidence they have confirmed their alleged data with anyone from Twitter/X.
That was followed by whining that Grok didn’t advance right-wing narratives regarding statements by a certain Democratic senator:
X revealed its love affair with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and when it gave him the highest visibility score out of all of his colleagues in both the House and Senate. His left-wing colleagues in the Senate, by extension, also greatly benefited from this cozy relationship.
Out of 100 senators, the top 42 scores were exclusively bestowed upon Democrats. Republicans made up nearly all the bottom 43 ranked senators. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), a former Democrat who split from the party, was the only exception.
Not only did X crown Schumer’s account with the highest overall “visibility” score (92 out of 100), it also rated him one of the most credible senators on the platform. X gave Schumer a stellar reputation score of 95 out of 100, appearing to overlook many major canards that the senator posted from his account.
Schumer’s X account has repeatedly pushed various fallacies. In one post, Schumer lent credence to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who gave what is now known to have been false testimony about Trump trying to wrestle the steering wheel of his motorcade from Secret Service agents.
Schumer also posted the debunked claim that Trump had called white supremacists who attended the Charlottesville, Virginia Unite the Right rally in 2016 “very fine people.” A Snopes fact-check rated this claim “false.”
Baldwin and Vazquez’s evidence that Hutchinson gave “false testimony” about Trump — in fact, she merely repeated what she said she was told by Secret Service agent Tony Ornato — was a link to an article by the far-right Western Journal that misspelled Ornato’s name. Ornato abruptly retired two days before he was to testify to the House’s committee, forcing a rescheduling of the testimony; when he finally did testify a few months later, pleaded ignorance and “did not recall” the incident in question or saying anything about it to Hutchinson. The committee “found multiple parts of Ornato’s testimony questionable.” As for the Charlottesville claim, we pointed out that Snopes has been criticized for ignoring the context of Trump’s words and that he never made a clear, definitive statement about it.
Baldwin and Vazquez concluded by repeating their unproven “radical remnant” conspiracy theory:
Musk’s $43 billion acquisition of Twitter in 2022 was a major turning point in the free speech fight against Big Tech censorship. But it’s becoming apparent that holdovers from Old Twitter aren’t letting go of the power they tasted during the 2020 election.
The theory of an internal revolt among Old Regime holdovers at X is also not a new one.
Using its CensorTrack.org database, MRC revealed a shocking spike in censorship cases in 2023 following Musk’s acquisition. This was a major red flag showing how Old Twitter employees had actively undermined Musk’s pragmatic approach to free speech online.
This time, however, Musk’s AI and his actions to make the algorithm transparent are making it much harder for the radical remnant to hide their insubordination from Musk.
Despite having no evidence whatsoever to back up anything Baldwin and Vazquez claimed, the MRC pulled the same stunt the same day — this time targeting Kamala Harris — in a post by Luis Cornelio:
Either Jack Dorsey’s ghost still haunts X’s algorithm or, alternatively, a radical remnant continues to work its dark arts within the platform’s ranks to undermine Elon Musk’s vision of a free-speech platform divorced from its history of election interference.
A new study by MRC Free Speech America researchers found that the X algorithm has actively pushed Vice President Kamala Harris’s account, granting her a broader reach than former President Donald Trump’s potential GOP running mates.
The study, performed using X’s open-source algorithm and its AI chatbot Grok, comes immediately after another MRC report revealed that X was de-amplifying the accounts of Republican members of Congress while simultaneously boosting radical Democrats.
This favoritism is also evident in the 2024 veepstakes, with X promoting Harris significantly more than North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sens. JD Vance (R-OH) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), who are all on Trump’s VP shortlist.
Cornelio similarly failed to offer any verification of the AI-generated claims or why they should be believed at face value, given how the MRC has played gotcha with Google’s AI engines. Like his co-workers, Cornelio invoked the rogue-employee conspiracy theory:
X’s giving Harris an algorithmic advantage suggests that the platform is boosting a widely unpopular candidate against two important backdrops: the Republican National Committee’s convention and Harris’s potential elevation to the presidency.
Biden’s cognitive decline and polls suggesting he could be a one-term president are just adding fuel to the fire of Democrats’ concerns about whether Biden should be the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. Harris herself has struggled with low polls, with many showing she is more unpopular than her boss. However, Harris benefits from X’s algorithms and longstanding support from Big Tech giants, including Google.
In May, Musk pledged to address the issue of suppressed content when pressed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) on X. “Well, neither conservative [sic] nor progressives should be throttled. The point is to have an even playing field,” Musk responded. “I will investigate.”
It isn’t immediately clear whether Musk has directed his employees to address this issue or if they have ignored his commands. This situation suggests that the ghost of the Jack Dorsey-owned Twitter 1.0 is still affecting the platform and targeting Republicans, despite Musk’s pledge to change this.
Never mind, of course, that Cornelio has absolutely no evidence to back up his conspiracy theory — he’s just perpetuating a right-wing narrative that assumes the only possible reason right-wingers look bad on social media is because of “liberal bias.” And we all know that narrative is more important than facts at the MRC.