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A week after Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump for president, President Joe Biden\u2019s team used Musk\u2019s social media platform X<\/a> \u2014 in addition to more neutral spaces such as Facebook<\/a> and Instagram \u2014 to announce he is\u00a0ending his reelection campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a testament to how ingrained the platform has become among the power players of the political and media world, as well as users looking for news and live updates of major events. While Meta\u2019s Facebook and Instagram, along with TikTok, boast far more users, X users say keeping up with the news is not the reason they use those platforms, according to a recent\u00a0survey by the Pew Research Center<\/a>. X is the exception: most of the site\u2019s users say following the news is a reason they use it and about half say they regularly get their news from there.<\/p>\n \u201cX is where history happens,\u201d posted X CEO Linda Yaccarino on Sunday with a screenshot of Biden\u2019s announcement. While a comment pointed out that the same message was posted on other social media platforms as well, the narrative remains an important one for X and its long-touted\u00a0efforts to become a \u201cdigital town square.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cOther platforms have emerged with the goal of supplanting X, but what events like the Biden post shows is that this is still where people go to make both fast and consequential impact,\u201d said Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University\u2019s Tech Policy Institute.<\/p>\n That\u2019s even though the site has become a less reliable place to find accurate information, due in large part to changes Musk made since assuming the helm. Since the 2022\u00a0takeover, Musk has upended<\/a>\u00a0many of the former Twitter\u2019s policies including around misinformation and hate speech,\u00a0gutted its staff<\/a>\u00a0and transformed what people see on the site.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does not appear as though would-be competitors have been able to displace Twitter from its perch as the go-to place for political news,\u201d Kreps said. \u201cIn an ideal world, a lot of people would have and did try to go elsewhere but these alternatives needed to offer products that people want and use and they have not done that. Until that time, we\u2019ll probably see a segment of users for whom their principles and practices are at odds.\u201d<\/p>\n As its owner and arguably most influential user, Musk has also used X to try to sway political discourse around the world \u2014 getting in a\u00a0dustup with a Brazilian judge<\/a>\u00a0over censorship, railing against what he calls the \u201cwoke mind virus\u201d and\u00a0amplifying false claims<\/a>\u00a0that Democrats are secretly flying in migrants to vote in U.S. elections.<\/p>\n Long before he endorsed Trump, Musk turned increasingly toward the right in his posts and actions on the platform. He\u2019s reinstated previously banned accounts such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and former U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as accounts belonging to neo-Nazis and white supremacists.<\/p>\n Advertisers who halted spending on X in response to antisemitic and other hateful material were\u00a0engaging in \u201cblackmail,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Musk has alleged. And it was on X that he announced he was moving the company\u2019s headquarters, as well as those of SpaceX<\/a>, to the red state of Texas from deep blue California.<\/p>\n \u201cThe important thing about Twitter has long been the community of users who\u2019ve embraced it. And there is a proliferation of journalists and elected officials and thought leaders who still use it today,\u201d said Mark Jablonowski, chief technology officer at DSPolitical, a digital advertising firm that works for Democratic campaigns. \u201cAnd it is an effective way of rapidly getting a message out to a large and influential group of people. However, that group is clearly waning. You are seeing users of the platform jumping ship, left and right. And as you are seeing the content become more and more extreme and unsuitable for general consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s message Sunday was posted on X two minutes before it went up on Meta platforms such as Facebook and Threads. It\u2019s not clear if this was intentional, and the campaign did not immediately respond to a message for comment on Monday.<\/p>\n \u201cIt might have been just, you know, who hit enter first on the keyboard internally,\u201d Jablonowski said. \u201cBut I think you definitely are seeing a world where five years ago, this might have been exclusively on Twitter, and now you\u2019re seeing it across many different properties.\u201d<\/p>\n Political campaigns, he noted, need to meet voters where the voters are \u2014 and for many, that is still X.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats still do appearances on Fox<\/a> News,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n When it comes to advertising dollars, however, \u201cthe money is clearly going to Meta properties and YouTube<\/a>. I don\u2019t know, at least on the Democratic side, many, if any campaigns that are looking to spend advertising dollars on (X).\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nRecommended Newsletter:<\/strong> The Fortune Next to Lead newsletter is a must-read for the next generation of C-suite leaders. Every Monday, the newsletter provides the strategies, resources, and expert insight needed to claim the most coveted positions in business. Subscribe now<\/a>.<\/div>\n