Comment by cogitovirus

really appreciate the constructive criticism — you're totally right, i should’ve highlighted the sources more clearly.

there were three main pieces of actual evidence i leaned on:

1. the nytimes story on account silencing, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/23/business/elon...

2. the visible boost of low-value tweets (though i should have connected to the x api hose and quantify the data),

3. this paper — https://github.com/timothyjgraham/AlgorithmicBiasX/blob/3f4c...

which actually didn’t make it to the the post because the essay was basically finished by the time i remembered i had it. I should have included it. it shows an algo change that boosts elon’s reach specifically.

every other source was speculative:

superbowl fiasko - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk... - little evidence

elon forced 100 engineers to boost his tweets ? - hearsay

there are also supposed whistle blowers - https://substack.com/@theconcernedbird/p-154577954 - but again. no evidence.

And the algorithm is still closed source.

i’m sorry the writing beyond the graph didn’t land for you.

mr gruez - I'll do better next time.

-- the author