Has Elon Musk been radicalised by his own platform?

The tech billionaire has used his significant reach to attack the prime minister and spread harmful misinformation. But what made him this way? Psychology professor Sander van der Linden explains why the real culprit behind the Tesla CEO’s drift to the far right may be Musk himself...

Elon Musk branded the prime minister ‘two-tier Keir’ in a series of tweets (PA)

It is no secret that Elon Musk’s politics have shifted significantly over the past few years. Once considered a fairly benign moderate, the Tesla CEO has increasingly interacted with ideas and figures on the fringes of the right.

What could explain this process of radicalisation? One obvious difference between the old and new Musk is that he has been spending an inordinate amount of time on Twitter/X. He’s liking, engaging, and amplifying low-quality content, which leads to more recommendations of similar content, reinforcing his own views and opinions. In short, he’s created his very own echo chamber.

It’s almost as if he’s not realising that he’s radicalising himself on his own platform. We know from neuropsychological research that learning your views align with those of others activates reward circuits in the brain. It’s like a dopamine hit. Sadly, Musk seems to have forgotten an essential rule of good business: don’t get high on your own supply.

This process came to a head recently, as the tech billionaire found himself part of the conversation around the far-right riots which have swept across the UK in recent days.

Following the tragic and deadly stabbing of innocent children in Southport last week, misinformation about the assailant’s identity quickly went viral on social media. In particular, a fake news account on Twitter/X known as “Channel3 Now” posted the entirely false claim that the attacker was known as “Ali Al-Shakati”, a Muslim asylum seeker on MI6’s watchlist who supposedly arrived in the UK last year by boat.

This claim was subsequently amplified by far-right influencers with millions of followers including Andrew Tate, Tommy Robinson, and Nigel Farage. In fact, after being pressed on the issue, Farage has now admitted that he spread false information.

What is significant here is that not only did the initial misinformation appear to have originated on Twitter/X, but it was also amplified by accounts that were previously banned for violating Twitter/X’s hate speech policies. In other words, the policy changes instituted by Musk since he took over the platform – including firing fact-checkers and the Trust and Safety Council – have greatly contributed to the viral spread of misinformation on the platform. But is Musk personally responsible?

Musk claims that users can “reply” below a post if they believe it to be false, or otherwise flag it to community notes. But replying below a post doesn’t make the correction visible and community notes cannot keep up with the onslaught of fake news. These are utterly insufficient means to stem the spread of misinformation, especially during a violent crisis.

Indeed, the fake name of the attacker was even “trending” in the UK on the platform’s “what’s happening” sidebar, which is visible to anyone and everyone. Outrage drives engagement. As I describe in my book Foolproof, what is needed is a pre-emptive misinformation management program where social media companies actively think about “prebunking” rather than debunking – that is, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

But these are “soft” measures. If social media companies such as Twitter/X fail to enforce their misinformation and hate speech policies, the UK government could consider temporarily restricting access to the site or getting it banned from the app store if false information continues to threaten people’s lives.

The EU has already charged Musk with violating new social media regulations. Free speech enthusiasts would do well to remember that hate speech and incitement of violence are not protected by free speech under UK law, and both Ofcom and the former chief inspector of the constabulary have mentioned that Musk and his company might be criminally liable if they fail to cooperate under the new Online Safety Act (OSA). Other social media platforms have responded by taking down posts, but Musk opted to troll Keir Starmer instead by posting the hashtag #TwoTierKier.

To better understand why Musk isn’t cooperating, it is helpful to examine his role in the spread of harmful misinformation. On 29 July, he tweeted that “civil war is inevitable”, which is not only false – but seems to violate his own platform’s policies on inciting and glorifying violence. His tweets amplify engagement with far-right content on the platform.

Importantly, this isn’t the first time that Musk has commented on anti-immigration issues. Earlier this year he endorsed the great replacement conspiracy theory, which falsely suggests that the white population is being replaced by non-white immigration from predominantly Muslim countries. He also propagated false claims about illegal and undocumented immigrants voting in the US election. These outlandish claims appear to be a reversal of his prior views on the issue, and are ironic in light of the fact that Musk himself is an immigrant to the United States.

Musk is sometimes applauded for making X a “beacon of free speech”, but the truth is very different. Although he accused Twitter’s former leadership team of being politically biased, Musk himself used the platform to instruct millions of users to vote for Republicans during the US midterm elections. He told people he wouldn’t donate to a political candidate and then went ahead and helped fund Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

He claims speech is open to all but attempted to censor the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) through aggressive lawsuits for exposing hate speech on the platform (he lost). He made academic research that can hold his platform accountable ludicrously unaffordable – and complied with demands from authoritarian governments, such as Turkey, to censor content ahead of elections (but claimed he had no choice).

It seems to me that Musk’s ownership of Twitter/X has been deleterious to both the healthy exchange of information and his own psychological wellbeing. Perhaps he should do what many of the site’s former users opted to do when he took over, and simply log off.

Sander van der Linden is professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge and author of ‘Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity’