The Center for Countering Digital Hate says posts on X containing conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump have been viewed more than 215 million times, and that 95% of those posts do not contain a fact-check by community members.
Almost immediately after the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, terms such as “staged,” “false flag,” and “deep state” began showing up in X’s trending topics window.
Using X’s advanced search function, CCDH researchers looked up keywords such as those outlined above to manually collect a sample of 100 popular posts about Trump’s attempted assassination. They then calculated the views of those tweets, including only the ones that got more than 10,000 views since July 13.
Some in the MAGA crowd said the orders for the shooting came directly from Joe Biden, or from the “deep state.” Some on the left speculated that, because the shooter appeared to mount his rooftop perch unopposed by the Secret Service, the assassination attempt was designed by the Trump campaign to create a fist-pumping photo op.
Others used the event to advance existing prejudices. The research also shows that posts containing antisemitic conspiracy theories received more than 8.8 million views.
X’s algorithm curates “top” posts based on the keywords used in them, and on how many reposts and replies they get. X also sells ads against posts on an auction system based on how much marketers are willing to pay for millions of impressions.
The CCDH has been something of a thorn in the side of X owner Elon Musk, who sued the nonprofit research group in July 2023 after it released a report finding that the social site was profiting from hate. The report came just after X reinstated thousands of once-banned accounts from what the CCDH called “neo-Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists, and spreaders of dangerous conspiracy theories.” But a federal judge dismissed the suit in March, saying that X was merely trying to “silence its critics.”