Nate Silver says X is rigged — Musk cries ‘bulls***’

X owner Elon Musk and the company’s Head of Product Nikita Bier have responded with insults and rhetorical demands to claims that its algorithm favors right-leaning influencers.

The claims were made by statistician Nate Silver, who used a bubble chart, sourced from Cluvio analytics, to map year-to-date activity on X and show that “red” engagement overwhelms “blue” engagement.

For example, right-leaning accounts belonging to Musk and Eric Daugherty sat at 251 million and 109 million respectively, while the New York Times, with 53 million followers, was barely visible.

Other red bubbles, representing Gunther Eagleman, Jackson Hinkle, and Libs of TikTok, dwarfed the engagement of their Democratic counterparts.

This isn’t the first time that Bier has been at the center of social media controversy. Indeed, he previously referred to the crypto community on X as a “bubble” and has admitted to suppressing Crypto Twitter (CT) before deleting those posts. 

Bier occasionally defends his actions with unverified information, such as internal data showing “80% of crypto is simply bots.”

Elon Musk backs up Bier in defense of X

Silver drove his point home with a specific example. He claimed a post about an NY Times original scoop about a downed US airman in Iran received an indefensibly low number of retweets and likes from its 53 million followers.

Bier dismissed Silver’s characterization. The data was inaccurate, he said, explaining that the post was paywalled and ranked lower because only 0.1% of users had access to it.

Silver wasn’t convinced, however. “There’s nothing organic about it; it’s deliberate choices you and the team are making,” he replied.

The choices, 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 without 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 called Silver’s data “bulls***,” insulted him personally, and tried to debunk his statistical argument with an anecdote.

Nate Silver claims X algo has obvious political bias

This is not Bier’s first algorithmic scandal. The last time he waged war against CT, he didn’t win.

In January, Bier unveiled a secret initiative to deprioritize CT impressions across X. Then, after his team made a mistake in an attempt to reduce engagement, bot activity reportedly spiked more than 10x.

Thousands of crypto influencers complained that X’s For You tab had become inundated with politics, ragebait, and slop. Eventually, Bier reversed his crypto shadow ban in a sort of victory for CT.

Read more: Crypto Twitter says Nikita Bier killed X — and ‘gm’

A randomized controlled experiment of 5,000 US users backs Silver’s thesis. X’s algorithmic feed shifted political opinions to the right by a statistically significant margin. 

Users exposed to the algorithm followed significantly more conservative accounts, saw more right-leaning content in their feeds, and received significantly less exposure to traditional media.

Silver noted separately that Democratic content performed worse on X. He’s claimed that the top accounts on X are “of incredibly low quality.”

Bier’s defense amounted to two claims: Silver’s bubblemap data was inaccurate, and/or paywalled content naturally ranks lower. Silver addressed both arguments. Neither side changed their mind.

The argument between Silver, Bier, and Musk generated tens of millions of combined views on X.

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