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,[6][7] including Donald Trump's,[8] gutted the teams that policed hate speech,[1] and then personally spent roughly $290 million to help elect Trump in 2024[9] before briefly serving as the public face of the Department of Government Efficiency.[10] 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,[11] and X later settled the dispute with the advertisers' trade body in July 2026.[12] 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 cast the deal as a defense of free speech, arguing the platform had become too restrictive.[8] In practice that meant a sharp rollback of content moderation. He cut roughly 80 percent of staff, including much of the team that policed hate speech and harassment,[1] stopped enforcing Twitter's policy titled "COVID-19 misleading information policy" in November 2022,[18] and announced a general amnesty in late 2022 for suspended accounts that had not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.[6] A later BBC Monitoring analysis reviewed more than 1,100 reinstated accounts with over 10,000 followers each, which it described as only a portion of the thousands allowed back.[7]

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.[8] Trump had been banned in January 2021 following the Capitol riot.[8] Musk also restored other high-profile accounts that had been removed for policy violations, including the Babylon Bee and Jordan Peterson.[8] 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.[8]

The Owner Is the Politics

X is unusual because its political identity is inseparable from its owner's. Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump in July 2024 after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania,[1] and became Trump's top campaign backer.[13] Across the 2024 cycle Musk gave more than $290 million to Republican candidates, political action committees and other outside spending groups, making him the largest individual political donor of the cycle.[9] Much of it ran through America PAC, the super PAC he created and funded,[1] and it is reported in 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 leaving at the end of May 2025.[10] He said in May 2025 that he would spend far less on future campaigns,[13] then clashed publicly with Trump over the administration's spending bill and pledged to form a party of his own, even as he gave $15 million to Republican-aligned super PACs that June.[14] He later abandoned the party plans and reconciled with Trump, and by 2026 he was again one of the biggest funders of Republican midterm efforts.[15] 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.[1]

The Advertiser Exodus and the Lawsuit

Musk's changes carried a direct business cost. Twitter earned about $4.5 billion from advertising in 2021, its last full year as a public company.[16] Many large advertisers paused spending after the takeover,[8] and the advertisers later said in court that they had moved to rival platforms over concerns about brand safety on X.[11] Rather than only court advertisers back, X sued them, filing an antitrust suit alleging that an industry initiative, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), had organized an illegal boycott.[11] The World Federation of Advertisers shut GARM down in August 2024.[12] On March 26, 2026, US District Judge Jane Boyle in Dallas dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, ruling that X had failed to show it suffered any harm under federal antitrust laws.[11] In July 2026, X and the World Federation of Advertisers announced they had settled the litigation, and the federation said it would not revive GARM or create a similar program.[12]

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.[2][3] The same deal valued xAI at $80 billion, placed both companies under a holding company, xAI Holdings Corp., and tied the platform directly to xAI's Grok chatbot, which is integrated into X.[2] The structure changed again in February 2026, when SpaceX acquired xAI in an all-stock deal valued at $1.25 trillion, the largest merger on record, folding X, Grok, and the rest of xAI into SpaceX.[4] X is therefore now a property of SpaceX, several layers below Musk, who holds roughly 85 percent of SpaceX's shareholder voting power.[5] X does not trade under its own ticker, but its parent SpaceX went public on June 12, 2026, listing on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX in the largest initial public offering on record. The offering raised about $75 billion, and SpaceX was valued above $2 trillion at the close of its first trading day.[5] Linda Yaccarino, whom Musk had appointed X CEO in 2023 in part to restore advertiser confidence, resigned in July 2025.[17]

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.

Corrections

Correction, September 23, 2026: An earlier version of this profile dated Twitter's 2021 advertising revenue to 2022, misstated SpaceX's valuation, and included a count of reinstated accounts we could not source. The year and valuation have been corrected and the unsourced count removed. We also corrected author names and dates on several source citations. These corrections did not change the profile's rating.

Footnotes

[1] Shannon Bond and Bobby Allyn, NPR, "2 years in, Trump surrogate Elon Musk has remade X as a conservative megaphone," October 25, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/22/nx-s1-5156184/elon-musk-trump-election-x-twitter

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

[3] Lora Kolodny and Ari Levy, 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

[4] Samantha Subin, CNBC, "Musk's xAI, SpaceX combo is the biggest merger of all time, valued at $1.25 trillion," February 3, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/03/musk-xai-spacex-biggest-merger-ever.html

[5] John Ruwitch and Geoff Brumfiel, NPR, "SpaceX IPO makes history as largest ever. Stock gains 19% on first day," June 12, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/06/12/nx-s1-5855004/stock-ai-spacex-ipo-elon-musk

[6] Al Jazeera (Reuters), "Musk: Twitter to provide 'general amnesty' to suspended accounts," November 24, 2022. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/11/24/musk-twitter-to-provide-general-amnesty-to-suspended-accounts

[7] BBC Monitoring Disinformation team, BBC News, "The haters and conspiracy theorists back on Twitter," March 8, 2023. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64554381

[8] CBS News (CBS/AP), "Elon Musk reinstates Trump's Twitter account 22 months after it was suspended," November 19, 2022, updated November 20, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-says-donald-trump-reinstated-twitter/

[9] David Meyers, OpenSecrets, "Elon Musk tops list of 2024 political donors, but five others gave more than $100 million," March 26, 2025. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2025/03/elon-musk-tops-list-of-2024-political-donors-but-six-others-gave-more-than-100-million

[10] NPR, "Elon Musk is leaving the federal government. What's next for DOGE?," May 30, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/30/nx-s1-5415641/musk-leaves-doge-what-comes-next

[11] 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

[12] Akash Sriram, Reuters (via Claims Journal), "X, World Federation of Advertisers Settle Litigation Over GARM Dispute," July 30, 2026. https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2026/07/30/339178.htm

[13] Kevin Breuninger, 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

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

[15] Fredreka Schouten, CNN, "Elon Musk's super PAC starts spending to help GOP in midterms, including Texas' Ken Paxton," September 3, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/03/politics/elon-musk-spending-midterms

[16] Twitter, Inc., "Twitter Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2021 Results," February 10, 2022 (fiscal 2021 advertising revenue $4,506 million). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/twitter-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-year-2021-results-301479494.html

[17] Al Jazeera (news agencies), "CEO Linda Yaccarino announces resignation from Musk's X," July 9, 2025. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/9/ceo-linda-yaccarino-announced-resignation-from-musks-x

[18] TechCrunch, "Twitter says it's no longer enforcing COVID-19 misleading information policy," November 29, 2022. https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/29/twitter-covid-29-misleading-info-policy-change/