Partisan X posts boost political polarisation among users, research finds

Study shows small changes to tone of posts in for you' feed increase unfavourable feelings towards political opponents

Small changes to the tone of posts fed to users of X can increase feelings of political polarisation as much in a week as would have historically taken at least three years, research has found.

A groundbreaking experiment to gauge the potency of Elon Musk's social platform to increase political division found that when posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity were boosted, even barely perceptibly, in the feeds of Democrat and Republican supporters there was a large change in their unfavourable feelings towards the other side.