Elon Musk’s tweets about politics appear in X users’ feeds within 2 sessions, whether they want it or not — Fortune study

Elon Musk’s alliance with Donald Trump has involved millions of dollars in support of the presidential candidate, on-stage appearances at Trump rallies, and even controversial cash giveaways for swing state voters. But Musk’s most unique contribution to Trump’s White House quest is something no political candidate or campaign in history has ever had at their disposal: Musk’s tweets. 

The billionaire Tesla CEO has turned his personal feed into a non-stop pro-Trump megaphone, sharing MAGA talking points to his roughly 203 million followers on X. It’s a remarkable level of reach by any influencer standards (Taylor Swift has 95 million X followers, and 283 million on the much larger Instagram).

Because the X platform is owned and operated by Musk, the tech mogul’s political musings and commentary (which can number 20 or more a day) have effectively become a built-in feature of the service. For many users, Musk’s tweets feel inescapable — seeming to pop up whether the person knows or cares about Musk, his companies, politics, or even business in general.

Fortune conducted a multi-day experiment to gauge just how prevalent Musk really is on his social media platform. In approximately 90% of the sessions on X that Fortune conducted — through a dozen different test accounts — a post from Musk appeared at least once in the timeline, usually much more often.

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