Tech billionaire Elon Musk controls the X platform, which gives him a natural avenue for amplifying far-right influencers and narratives. But at least one MAGA figure is not satisfied with how that control is going.
On Wednesday, Michael Caputo, a far-right activist who previously worked in the first Trump administration's Department of Health and Human Services, took to X to accuse Musk of allowing leftist content to creep back into the algorithm.
"Every time I watch a video on X a second video shows immediately after," complained Caputo. "I noticed these were all Leftist videos, mostly Democrat members of Congress. So I kept a tally for a few weeks. 191 of 200 videos I watched on X were followed next by a Leftist video. @elonmusk what’s up?"
Although Musk left the Trump administration last year following an explosive feud over tax policy, that feud has since cooled off somewhat and Musk is gearing up to act as a megadonor for GOP causes in the midterms.
Meanwhile, despite Caputo's discontent, X has frequently come under fire for pushing extreme right content, particularly through Grok, Musk's artificial intelligence system that has become heavily integrated with the platform. While users have sometimes successfully pushed Grok into endorsing liberal policies or attacking Musk himself, Grok has been tampered with frequently to put a thumb on the scale for Musk and the far-right, at various points proclaiming itself "MechaHitler" or becoming obsessed with South African "white genocide" conspiracy theories.
More recently, prosecutors in Europe are investigating how Grok's image generation tool has been churning out a wave of non-consensual sexually exploitative images of real people, and even children.