Sky News have produced an exceptional piece of journalism exploring how Elon Musk, via his ownership of X (formerly Twitter), is increasingly shaping political discourse in the UK, particularly by boosting right-wing and fringe voices. The investigation involved creating nine new British X accounts (three left-leaning, three right-leaning, three neutral) and collecting roughly 90,000 posts from about 22,000 accounts. The key finding was that over 60% of political content shown to these accounts came from right-wing sources, while only about 32% came from left-wing ones, and just 6% from non-partisan sources. Left-leaning users still saw nearly as much right-wing content as left. Neutral users saw twice as much right-wing content as left.

Musk himself has publicly endorsed or amplified figures like Rupert Lowe and Ben Habib, whose posts saw notable upticks in engagement when Musk replied or retweeted them. For example, Lowe’s tweets got roughly five times more reach when Musk engaged with them. The article suggests this is more than coincidence, the algorithm appears to favour right-wing and extreme content, with 72% of posts from ‘extreme’ authors coming from the right.

The piece also examines the broader shift: Musk’s overhaul of the platform, the drastic staff reductions after his takeover of Twitter, and a move towards open-sourcing the algorithm (though experts say the publicly available code offers limited transparency). Meanwhile UK regulators under the Online Safety Act are grappling with how to deal with these developments. Many voices quoted argue that unconstrained platform power coupled with algorithmic bias poses a threat to democratic discourse.