X

Quick Take

Of the three major US social platforms, X is the one with an openly declared political direction, set by its owner. Elon Musk declared a broad amnesty that restored thousands of previously banned accounts, including Donald Trump's, gutted the teams that policed hate speech, and then personally spent roughly $290 million to help elect Trump in 2024 before briefly running the Department of Government Efficiency. The shift drove a wave of advertisers out, and X responded by suing them; a federal judge dismissed that antitrust suit with prejudice in March 2026. No major platform has moved as far, as publicly, in a single political direction as X has under Musk.

The Musk Takeover and the Moderation Reversal

When Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in October 2022, he described the goal as turning the platform into a "digital town square" for free speech. In practice that meant a sharp rollback of content moderation. He cut roughly 80 percent of staff, including much of the trust-and-safety workforce, removed tools users had relied on to report misleading information, and announced a general amnesty in late 2022 that restored thousands of accounts suspended under the prior rules, with reporting documenting more than 1,100 prominent reinstatements.

The most prominent reinstatement was Donald Trump's, restored in November 2022 after Musk ran a poll on his own account that narrowly favored it. Trump had been banned in January 2021 following the Capitol riot. Musk also restored other high-profile accounts that had been removed for policy violations. The company adopted a stated policy Musk summarized as "freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach," limiting distribution of some content rather than removing it.

The Owner Is the Politics

X is unusual because its political identity is inseparable from its owner's. Elon Musk, who has said he previously voted for Democrats including Joe Biden, endorsed Donald Trump in July 2024 immediately after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, and became the single largest financial backer of Trump's campaign. Across the 2024 cycle Musk spent roughly $290 million through his own America PAC and related vehicles to support Trump and Republican candidates, making him one of the largest individual political donors of the 2024 cycle. This spending ran through his own America PAC and other pro-Trump and Republican-aligned committees, reported through federal filings as Musk's personal political activity rather than corporate giving by X itself.

After the election Musk served for several months as the public face of the Department of Government Efficiency, a Trump administration effort to cut federal spending and agencies, before stepping back in mid-2025. He has said he would spend far less on future campaigns after a public falling-out with Trump in 2025, while also floating a new political party of his own. Throughout, Musk has used his own X account, the most-followed on the platform and frequently surfaced by its algorithm, as his primary political channel.

The Advertiser Exodus and the Lawsuit

Musk's changes carried a direct business cost. Twitter generated roughly $4.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2022; many large advertisers cut or paused spending after the moderation rollback and Musk's own posts, which several corporate marketing departments described as incompatible with their brands. Rather than only court advertisers back, X sued them, filing an antitrust suit alleging that a now-disbanded industry group, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, had organized an illegal boycott. On March 26, 2026, US District Judge Jane Boyle in Dallas dismissed that lawsuit with prejudice, ruling that X had failed to show it suffered any harm under federal antitrust laws. Some advertisers returned in the period after Trump's 2024 victory.

Ownership and Structure

X was privately held by Musk from his 2022 takeover until March 2025, when his AI company xAI acquired it in an all-stock deal that valued X at $33 billion, or $45 billion including about $12 billion of debt. That merger placed both companies under a holding company, X.AI Holdings Corp, with the combined entity valued around $113 billion at the time, and tied the platform directly to xAI's Grok chatbot, which is integrated into X. The structure changed again on February 2, 2026, when SpaceX acquired xAI outright in an all-stock deal, folding X, Grok, and the rest of the xAI stack into SpaceX and creating a combined entity reported at roughly $1.25 trillion. X is therefore now a property of SpaceX, several layers below Musk, who controls SpaceX through a dual-class share structure. X does not trade under its own ticker, but its ultimate parent SpaceX went public on June 12, 2026, listing on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX in the largest initial public offering on record, which raised about $75 billion and valued SpaceX above $1.7 trillion. Linda Yaccarino, whom Musk had appointed X CEO in 2023 to rebuild advertiser relationships, resigned in July 2025.

Where to Find Them

X operates at x.com and through its mobile apps. The platform is free with an advertising-supported model, alongside a paid subscription tier, X Premium, that offers verification and expanded features. It is available worldwide except in countries that block it.

Footnotes

[1] Jonathan Vanian, CNBC, "Elon Musk says xAI has acquired X in deal that values social media site at $33 billion," March 28, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/elon-musk-says-xai-has-acquired-x-in-deal-that-values-social-media-site-at-33-billion.html

[2] CBS News, "Elon Musk reinstates Trump's Twitter account 22 months after it was suspended," November 20, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-says-donald-trump-reinstated-twitter/

[3] Bobby Allyn, NPR, "2 years in, Trump surrogate Elon Musk has remade X as a conservative megaphone," October 22, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/22/nx-s1-5156184/elon-musk-trump-election-x-twitter

[4] Fredreka Schouten, CNN, "Elon Musk gave $15 million to Republican allies just before announcing his own America Party," July 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/31/politics/elon-musk-republicans

[5] CNBC, "Elon Musk says he will spend 'a lot less' on future campaign donations," May 20, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/20/elon-musk-campaign-spending-trump.html

[6] Jonathan Stempel and Mike Scarcella, Reuters (via CNBC), "Judge dismisses lawsuit by Musk's X Corp accusing advertisers of illegal boycott," March 26, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/03/26/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-by-musks-x-corp-accusing-advertisers-of-illegal-boycott.html

[7] Jonathan Vanian, TechCrunch, "Elon Musk says xAI acquired X," March 29, 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/29/elon-musk-says-xai-acquired-x/