The Register – “Significant uptick in visibility for Musk, Republican account posts from July 13 – A pair of researchers say they’ve determined that July 13 was likely the day that X, formerly known as Twitter, made platform-level algorithm changes that increased the visibility of posts made by Elon Musk and Republican-leaning accounts in the run-up to the US election. That date may stick out in the memory as when Elon Musk, now the owner of X, formally endorsed Donald Trump in the recent US presidential election. Coincidence? Perhaps not, according to a working paper- A computational analysis of potential algorithmic bias on platform X during the 2024 US election – shared by Timothy Graham and Mark Andrejevic of Queensland University of Technology. The pair examined posts made by Musk, Republican-leaning accounts, and Democrat-leaning accounts between January 1 and October 25, noting that July 13 appeared to be the day the tide turned red on X. Their research was split into two phases, one looking at the prominence of Musk’s posts pushed to users through features like the default “For You” feed, and the other comparing the prominence of Republican- or Democrat-aligned posts. Graham and Andrejevic observed an increase in all metrics for Musk’s posts on the platform from mid-July onward. These included views, retweets, and favorites…”