Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones repeatedly posted on X erroneous claims about hurricanes Helene and Milton, including that the Pentagon had somehow engineered the storms.
“Treason Alert,” Jones wrote in one post. “America is the target,” he warned in another.
In just those three posts, Greene and Jones racked up a combined 72,000 likes, and over 34,000 shares. They are only a handful of the many misleading diatribes and conspiracy theories that regularly appear on X.
Not long ago, those two would not have been able to publish those posts through their accounts.
Greene and Jones are among a large set of users who were barred from the site for spreading misinformation, inciting violence or otherwise violating its rules — and were reinstated after Elon Musk bought the platform, then known as Twitter, two years ago.
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Many of these people picked up where they left off, according to a New York Times analysis of 50,000 posts by more than 100 high-profile reinstated users. They include Laura Loomer, a right-wing influencer who has campaigned with former President Donald Trump; Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow; and Rogan O’Handley, a right-wing political commentator. All have a broad reach — at least 100,000 followers — and were identified by researchers who study disinformation or extremism on X. Most hold right-wing or even far-right views, and are part of a broader political shift underway on X. Democrats have been abandoning the platform, according to recent academic research, while use by Republicans has remained steady. After publicly endorsing Trump for president in July, Musk has used X as a bullhorn to promote the candidate, one that many reinstated accounts then echo.
The company has not disclosed how many people have been allowed back. The accounts tracked by the Times — political candidates, media personalities, Trump and members of his inner circle — are most likely a sliver and do not represent everyone who was reinstated. But they often propel conspiracy theories that circulate on Musk’s social network.
Since coming back, the accounts have spread false claims and narratives about immigration, race, natural disasters and stolen elections:
— Over half the accounts tracked by the Times have discussed baseless rumors that the attempted assassination of Trump in July was orchestrated by powerful Democrats. Combined, their posts were shared 3 million times in the 24 hours after the shooting.
Since Helene made landfall last month, 80 accounts have posted more than 500 times discussing claims that the government is controlling the weather, or that the Biden administration is withholding aid from those affected by the storms. The posts were shared more than 1 million times.
In the past month, posts from 51 accounts discussed “illegal immigrants.” Claims that people from other countries were committing voter fraud, stealing taxpayer money and linked to possible terror plots were shared or liked more than 2.7 million times.
The reach and potential influence of these accounts are reflections of a policy instituted by Musk in his early days of ownership in 2022, when he declared an “amnesty” program for previously suspended accounts.
Musk plays a big role in what spreads. He regularly responds to and shares claims made by the users tracked by the Times, elevating their posts to his 200 million followers. Many of the users have seen their follower counts explode since coming back.
Musk and X did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the reinstated accounts.
Every day, about a quarter of a billion people use X. The power of the reinstated accounts to shape the discourse on the platform is enormous, as is the risk, said Isabelle Frances-Wright of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research organization.
“X has gone from being a social network to, frankly at this point, an online opinion news network where the majority of the narratives and hateful content come from a very small group of people who affect the entirety of the platform in an outsized way,” Frances-Wright said.
In the second half of 2021, months before Musk made an unsolicited offer to buy Twitter, the social network suspended more than 1.3 million accounts for a range of abuses, including harassing users, posting hateful material and spreading Covid misinformation. The company had kicked off 70,000 accounts associated with the pro-Trump conspiracy movement QAnon in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill.
When Musk took over in October the next year, he vowed to reinstate many users whom he believed were unfairly barred. He had long accused Twitter of censoring conservative voices, describing himself as a “free speech absolutist.” (He rebranded the company as X in 2023.)
A handful of the accounts tracked by the Times express left-leaning and liberal views. But the vast majority of reinstated users in the group tend to share right-leaning posts. Researchers found this month that conservative accounts posting about Trump before the 2020 election shared more links to fake news and untrustworthy content than liberal accounts posting about President Joe Biden did, and were more than four times as likely to be suspended.
Most of the accounts tracked by the Times were restored in late 2022, though some returned in 2023 and even this year. Trump posted only once in the first two years his account was back — his mug shot. But after an audio livestream on the site with Musk in August, the former president picked up his cadence. Now he regularly posts, often to criticize his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said Trump “will continue using every platform to cut through the liberal mainstream media bias and bring his winning MAGA message to every voter in this country.”
X still has rules prohibiting certain types of content. They include hateful conduct (including the spread of dehumanizing language or images), misleading and potentially harmful media (such as manipulated audio and fabricated images) and abusive or harassing posts (like unwanted sexual objectification or denial of violent events as hoaxes).
Despite its policies, incendiary content proliferates on X.
There is a symbiotic relationship between Musk and the accounts tracked by the Times. Several amplified rumors from him — later debunked by government officials — about the emergency response to Helene. Nearly 90% of the reinstated accounts examined by the Times have tried to engage with the billionaire, often expressing their admiration for him.
Musk frequently responds: He has tagged some of the tracked accounts more than 160 times since bringing them back, effectively exposing them to his 200 million followers.
As the election nears, some high-profile reinstated accounts have begun to preemptively cast doubt on the results. Much of the commentary is reminiscent of the conspiracy theories that swirled in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 riot.
Since being welcomed back to the platform, roughly 80% of the accounts have discussed the idea of stolen elections, with most making some variation of the claim that Democrats were engaged in questionable voting schemes. Across at least 1,800 posts on the subject, the users drew more than 13 million likes, shares and other reactions.
Some prominent accounts shared a misleading video that used shaky evidence to claim widespread voter registration of noncitizens. One of the posts received more than 750,000 views; Musk later circulated the video himself.
In late August, Trump claimed on X that Harris would destroy Social Security by allowing immigrants without legal status to tap into the program.
Trump’s post garnered 9.4 million views. Many of the reinstated accounts repeated the claim nearly verbatim.
