Groundbreaking investigation points out the obvious: X is pushing far-right content

A Sky News ‘investigation’ has found that the algorithm of far-right billionaire Elon Musk’s X social media platform is prioritising sending far-right content to users:

No one who is paying attention can be shocked by this ‘revelation’. Musk – as the Sky video notes – spoke via video link at the recent fascist rally in London and has recently set up ‘Grokipedia’, his own rival to Wikipedia, to push right-wing narratives because he doesn’t think Israel supporter Jimmy Wales’s Wikipedia is doing it enough.

Musk has always intended this for X

X’s Grok AI has also admitted, when instructed to override its bias programming, to promoting Israel, Trump, Musk and capitalism and to denigrate, or hide altogether, Palestinians, socialism and environmental concerns – and to promoting far-right Islamophobic lies. The fact its sister algorithm is doing the same is no surprise. The bias in favour of the right is not a new phenomenon, either. Twitter admitted it was favouring right-wing ‘tweets’ long before Musk took it over and re-named it X.

Nor is the far-right bias limited to X. Facebook and its parent company Meta have been doing the same since at least 2017 – a practice that was re-confirmed by the Wall Street Journal in 2020 and again by Human Rights Watch in 2023. TikTok, despite its reputation as the least censorious platform for Palestinian content, was admonished by, among other human rights groups, The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media (7amleh) and Sada Social for violations against Palestinians long before it agreed a deal with US Israel fanatic Larry Ellison for the purchase of its US platform, a situation that is expected to see censorship of Palestinians escalate exponentially.

Sky’s X post with its video trailer triggered an avalanche of responses, more or less evenly split between comments along the lines of ‘We already knew’ and ‘You and other UK mainstream media are in no position to talk’:

Left independent media are more vital than ever – and the new Palestinian-founded social media platform UpScrolled needs to succeed as a counterweight to the corporate, imperial platforms.

Featured image via Unsplash/Kelly Sikkema