X proprietor Elon Musk and the corporate’s Head of Product Nikita Bier have responded with insults and rhetorical calls for to claims that its algorithm favors right-leaning influencers.
The claims had been made by statistician Nate Silver, who used a bubble chart, sourced from Cluvio analytics, to map year-to-date exercise on X and present that “red” engagement overwhelms “blue” engagement.
For instance, right-leaning accounts belonging to Musk and Eric Daugherty sat at 251 million and 109 million respectively, whereas the New York Instances, with 53 million followers, was barely seen.
Different purple bubbles, representing Gunther Eagleman, Jackson Hinkle, and Libs of TikTok, dwarfed the engagement of their Democratic counterparts.
This isn’t the primary time that Bier has been on the middle of social media controversy. Certainly, he beforehand referred to the crypto group on X as a “bubble” and has admitted to suppressing Crypto Twitter (CT) earlier than deleting these posts.
Bier often defends his actions with unverified info, akin to inside information displaying “80% of crypto is simply bots.”
These are the Twitter/X accounts with essentially the most engagement to this point in 2026. I suppose I had some instinct for the way dangerous it was, however jeez, that is what you get when the ecosystem is damaged. pic.twitter.com/zHrS7T0iVD
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 5, 2026
Elon Musk backs up Bier in protection of X
Silver drove his level dwelling with a particular instance. He claimed a publish about an NY Instances unique scoop a couple of downed US airman in Iran obtained an indefensibly low variety of retweets and likes from its 53 million followers.
Bier dismissed Silver’s characterization. The info was inaccurate, he stated, explaining that the publish was paywalled and ranked decrease as a result of solely 0.1% of customers had entry to it.
Silver wasn’t satisfied, nonetheless. “There’s nothing organic about it; it’s deliberate choices you and the team are making,” he replied.
The alternatives, he added, are “clearly resulting in low-quality content rising to the top.”
Bier counter-argued, accusing Silver of being intellectually dishonest for quote-tweeting with out context. Silver doubled down, “I think your algo surfaces too little quality. And I think your excuses in these back-and-forth exchanges have been validating of that.”
Musk then referred to as Silver’s information “bulls***,” insulted him personally, and tried to debunk his statistical argument with an anecdote.
Nate Silver claims X algo has apparent political bias
This isn’t Bier’s first algorithmic scandal. The final time he waged struggle towards CT, he didn’t win.
In January, Bier unveiled a secret initiative to deprioritize CT impressions throughout X. Then, after his staff made a mistake in an try to cut back engagement, bot exercise reportedly spiked greater than 10x.
Hundreds of crypto influencers complained that X’s For You tab had develop into inundated with politics, ragebait, and slop. Ultimately, Bier reversed his crypto shadow ban in a form of victory for CT.
A randomized managed experiment of 5,000 US customers backs Silver’s thesis. X’s algorithmic feed shifted political beliefs to the correct by a statistically important margin.
Customers uncovered to the algorithm adopted considerably extra conservative accounts, noticed extra right-leaning content material of their feeds, and obtained considerably much less publicity to conventional media.
Silver famous individually that Democratic content material carried out worse on X. He’s claimed that the highest accounts on X are “of incredibly low quality.”
Bier’s protection amounted to 2 claims: Silver’s bubblemap information was inaccurate, and/or paywalled content material naturally ranks decrease. Silver addressed each arguments. Neither facet modified their thoughts.
The argument between Silver, Bier, and Musk generated tens of hundreds of thousands of mixed views on X.
