Elon Musk says that his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, is a better source of information than the traditional news media. “I don’t read the legacy media anymore,” boasts Musk, who asserts that X has become “the collective consciousness of humanity.”
Apparently, Musk believes that Alex Jones, the far-right pundit and conspiracy theorist who is best known for repeatedly claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed 20 children and 6 adults was part of a government hoax, belongs in this collective consciousness.
Since Musk reactivated the X accounts of Alex Jones and his misinformation-addled website Infowars in December 2023 following a five-year ban, Jones has thrived on X, growing his audience while also becoming a major booster of Musk’s, according to an analysis by social media intelligence firm The Social Studies Group..
Jones’s following on X has more than doubled—from about 1.8 million to over 3.9 million today—since Musk reinstated his accounts, while engagement has soared. In 2017, the last full year before he was banned, Jones received about 7.7 million mentions (including retweets and shares) across his personal and Infowars accounts. Last year, Jones received 27 million mentions. This year, he is on pace to receive over 60 million mentions, according to the Social Studies Group’s analysis.
The analysis shows that a majority of engagement that Jones receives is now through his personal account, which accounted for 89% of all his engagement on X last year between the two handles. Prior to being banned, most of Jones’s engagement on then-Twitter came through his Infowars account.
As his follower count has swelled, Jones has become one of Musk’s biggest boosters on the platform. Between 2010 and 2018, Jones mentioned Musk just 31 times on Twitter, compared to 1,201 times in the 13 months since his reinstatement, according to Social Studies Group.
Jones’s support for Musk includes two tweets from last month in which he defended Musk’s pro H1-B visa stance during a high-octane debate within MAGA circles, which pitted Musk against far-right thought leaders like Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer. “Everyone bitching that [Musk] has flip flopped are either ignorant or lying,” Jones tweeted, before adding that Musk’s critics are “drama queens.” Musk responded appreciatively to both of those tweets. (Loomer, who has previously worked for Infowars, has accused Musk of cutting off her subscriptions and “shadow banning” her account. Bannon has called Musk “a truly evil person.”)
Meanwhile, in January alone, Musk has responded to six different posts from Jones, including one in which Jones wildly claimed that the Los Angeles fires were part of a “larger globalist plot to wage economic warfare and deindustrialize” the United States. “True,” Musk responded.
Jones’s success may in part be attributable to X’s algorithm. Forbes has identified over 150 people on X who have posted tweets about Jones appearing in their feeds since October, a period during which Jones’s follower count has grown by over 1 million. Most of these users expressed confusion or anger in their posts about why they were seeing Jones in their feeds, raising questions about whether X’s algorithm is artificially boosting Jones to people who have not expressed interest in him or or his brand of far-right, conspiratorial politics. “Suddenly videos of Alex Jones are all over my feed. Is this happening to other people?” tweeted one person a few weeks ago. Dozens responded yes.
A few X users said they can’t escape Jones, despite their attempts to do so. “No matter how many times I mute or block Alex Jones, he creeps back into my feed,” said one person last week. “Why does Alex Jones keep popping up on my feed after constantly selecting “not interested” on his content?” asked another user in December.
A spokesperson at X did not respond to a request for comment. Jones did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk has previously been accused of manipulating X’s algorithm to promote posts of far-right users and politicians. Last week the European Commission asked X to hand over internal documents related to its algorithm as part of an ongoing investigation into X and whether it’s adhering to the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which requires social media platforms to disclose how their algorithms work. A recent study out of the Queensland University of Technology found a “possible recommendation bias favouring Republican content in terms of visibility, potentially via recommendation mechanisms such as the “For You” feed,” following Musk’s endorsement of Donald Trump last July. That study also found “preferentially enhanced visibility and interaction” for posts issued by Musk himself.
Jones’s rising star on X coincides with the company’s intervention in Jones’s personal bankruptcy case, which has been slogging its way through federal courts since October 2022, after a Connecticut judge ordered Jones to pay $965 million to families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre. In November, X Corporation filed a motion in Jones’s bankruptcy case to prevent transfer of his and Infowars’ X accounts to whichever buyer ends up winning an auction for Infowars. (The satirical news site The Onion initially won the bid for Infowars, but the presiding judge later blocked it).
X’s intervention “seemed like it was motivated because of what was about to happen, and motivated partially because of Elon’s relationship to Alex Jones,” says Adam Weissman, an intellectual property lawyer who has followed the case. “It seems to be motivated by something beyond just purely a violation of their terms and conditions.”
Got a tip about Elon Musk or his businesses? Contact John Hyatt at jhyatt@forbes.com or on Signal at +1-720-951-2080
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