Twitter/X is the reason DJT became President. It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016, they successfully suppressed him in 2020, and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election.
As long as X is seen a kingmaker, someone will find it profitable to own/maintain, even if it doesn't convert Ads like Meta/Google.
> It happened accidentally (ie against the wishes of Twitter management) in 2016
I think the whole Cambridge Analytica fiasco played a bigger role, and I don't think they utilize Twitter. On top of that, frankly, TV and his behavior at rallies/debated helped him a lot more than Twitter did in 2016. I don't know a single MAGA supporter who was even on Twitter in 2016.
> they successfully suppressed him in 2020
How? He was banned after the election.
> and then Elon gave MAGA that platform in 2024, leading to DJT's successful election.
DJT was not on Twitter in 2024. Did it really make a difference when he had his own social network? We all have our opinions, but is there actual data supporting this for the 2024 election?
By suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election.
“The story was true but…”
Stopped reading here.
There are two separate "the story"s. One is a story about Hunter Biden's laptop. One is a story about political interference and/or bias at Twitter.
At least some of the story about Hunter Biden's laptop was true. That doesn't tell us anything about whether the story about political interference and/or bias at Twitter was true.
The linked article argues that (1) there wasn't in fact political interference at Twitter, (2) although Twitter employees (like employees of many many many tech companies) lean left, there was no sign that anything in the company's treatment of the H.B. laptop story was politically motivated, and (3) the fact that Twitter nerfed links to the NY Post's story about H.B.'s laptop for one day (a) more likely increased than decreased interest in that story and (b) had no impact to speak of on the presidential election anyway.
Of course it might be wrong about any or all of those things, but whether the NY Post's story about the laptop was actually true or not has nothing to do with any of them.
(The assertion being made upthread here is that Twitter's handling of the story was a deliberate attempt to "suppress" Donald Trump and that it handed the election to Joe Biden. It's all about the second story, not the first one.)
Yes it does.
In the case of Bush in the 2004 election, at that time they were pushing the story that Iraq had been developing WMDs; that was the initial justification for the invasion. Obviously false in hindsight, but at the time people were still pretty raw about 9/11, so critical thinking was in short supply, but--most importantly--it provided an enemy to focus on.
In the case of covid there was no comparable enemy. "Declaring war" on a virus would not have anywhere near the same impact as using the military to actually wage war on another country.
I disagree. Look at the way we talk about it, "the covid", "covid did this", etc. It absolutely would have worked as an enemy to declare war on and I don't think the vast majority of people would consider it trump's fault if he just got out ahead of it.
Imagine a world where he didn't do trumpy things and instead did things like talking about how this is a national, world wide foe we all need to work together to defeat, I know it's hard, we'll all make sacrifices, but we're the nation that beat the nazis and went to the moon, we can win this war on covid. For further details here are my science advisors talking about the latest info on counter measures.
Obviously this is imagining a world where trump isn't trump, but I very much believe obama/clinton/bush/etc would have been re-elected.
Keep in mind that we also have a strong tendency to re-elect the incumbent anyways and covid is an amazing opportunity to blame all your previous fuck ups on this new "totally unforseeable/preventable disease cataclysm!"
If he had a chance of being re-elected, it was certainly dead after his attempts at dealing with covid.
I don't understand this at all.
Covid was devastating for the whole world. I don't see how it is an "easy layup" for anybody or any country. Was there any country or scenario where it was an "easy layup"?
(I'm not convinced that that's right, but it isn't refuted by the fact that COVID-19 was devastating for the world in general and the US in particular.)
Anything but. Trump could have won in 2020 if not for Covid. A lot of turnout was anti-Trump protest vote.
'it will go away in two weeks, no one will even remember...'
injecting bleach
getting uv light 'inside the body'
the look on all his health advisors faces whenever he showed up at a press conference.
We literally have multiple Trump children openly bragging in public about how paying them gives one access to their father.
Nobody cares. Nobody would have cared about Hunter either.
I really don't think so, at least not in isolation. It probably contributed a small part but the right wing media machine is multi-faceted. There were a lot of podcasters (i.e. Joe Rogan), comedians and youtubers all publicly in support of a second DJT presidency and I think that had a much bigger factor overall than Twitter.
I very much doubt there was a different set of questions that would change peoples' minds about him after how his first term went.
The silent majority imho exists and is still the one deciding, not political activists on social media of both ends of the spectrum in their respective echo chambers.
I also doubt hispanics and other minorities voted for Trump because they were obsessively on twitter. Not being able to make ends meet, a weekend at Bernie's president, and the over-the-top blank check given to Israel played more of a role than Elon buying twitter.
In Israel the debate was "should we be rooting for Trump because of how much of a blank check he will give our government, or against him because of the damage he will do to the free world that we are part of and also the blank check that he will give our government?"
Since this prediction turned out basically correct, I wonder if across the seas people had different expectations?
I don't think they would phrase it like that, but I think they thought he had a better chance of ending the war.
I listed the reasons in order of importance. People voted against the incumbent because they couldn't make ends meet first and foremost.
But as for Israel, one would be hard pressed to find any gaps between the blank check Biden gave and the blank check Trump is giving Israel now. After Biden left office, people close to or in his administration admitted there was zero pressure applied to Israel for a ceasefire, despite public statements by the admin in support of a ceasefire at the time. But there were Muslim mayors and politicians as well as regular citizens in Michigan, some with family in Palestine, who thought it would be madness to vote for more of the same, knowing full well that Trump might not be better. They ultimately thought betting on Trump's ego and meglomania and his desire for getting the Nobel peace prize had the potential to shake the things up and was the preferrable option out of the two terrible choices. Now I don't think that was the right calculation at the time, but I wouldn't fault anyone who didn't want to try the same thing and expect different results.
As a thought experiment, do you think X would have made the difference if Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis were the GOP nominee? I would bet either people think X couldn't have helped enough (candidates didn't have the rizz) and ultimately they'd have lost, or they wouldn't be as toxic as Trump and wouldn't need whatever theoretical help X would provide.
Or if you like stats, Harris broadly lost on all social media platforms [0].
Years ago now I predicted Musk would burn through Twitter's attention capital and it'd become less and less relevant over time. I think that's happening: all the stats I can look up show declining users, usage, and revenue. A lot of people use X as "write only" now, or have very sporadic interactive use.
Another way of saying this is Musk bought the peak, and is running this new Nazi-friendly version as a short position against American democracy. The only way he gains attentional or financial capital from that position is if something even more illiberal happens to society and this far-right version of X is suddenly as relevant as center-left Twitter was in 2016, like Nick Fuentes becomes president or something.
[0]: https://navigatorresearch.org/2024-post-election-survey-a-ma...
DJT and his supporters could craft narratives directly, rather than going through traditional media.
DJT's information flow: DJT -> Twitter-based Supporters -> News Orgs -> Electorate
Other Candidate's info flows: Candidate -> News Orgs -> Electorate
So not only could DJT move faster, but he also didn't need permission/buy-in from Editors/Owners of news orgs.
2024 isn't a story of how Trump outwitted his opponents but one of how his opponents tied their shoelaces together.