X CEO Elon Musk celebrated his “free speech platform’s” victory over legacy and corporate media on Thursday after X became the number one free news application in Canada.
Despite a slew of Canadian journalists and legacy media organizations such as CBC and Radio-Canada vowing to boycott X, once Musk took over, the social media platform outshined them all during one of the most watched events of the year, the US elections.
The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, is the most popular free news app for iPhone users in Canada as of Thursday, and second only to CNN among iPad users.
For iPhone users in Canada, Reddit was the second most popular app followed by CNN. The subscription-based publishing app, Substack, was in fourth while Canada’s own CBC News was the ninth most popular news app in Canada.
This comes on the tail of the US election, which resulted in a victory for President Donald Trump, closely watched by Canadians.
Musk played an active role in Trump’s campaign with the president offering him a lead position in a new “Department of Government Efficiency,” to cut government waste though no official appointment has been made as of yet.
Musk reposted an image shared by X user “The Rabbit Hole” which showed the level of positive evening news coverage each presidential candidate received during five separate election cycles.
The post used sources from a News Buster’s article which referenced a Media Research Center study. The study said that between ABC, CBS, and NBC, Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, received 78% positive coverage while Trump received 15% positive coverage.
According to the chart, the 15% positive coverage was an improvement for Trump compared to the corporate press’ 8% positive coverage of the Republican presidential candidate in 2020.
Musk claimed it was because of his platform’s free speech focus, that Americans now had an alternative to the legacy media.
“Propaganda is far less effective when there is a real-time source of truth on X,” he said.
In another post, Musk said that anybody who was shocked by Trump’s victory in the 2024 election should re-evaluate where they obtain their information from.
“This trend was obvious on X for months, but almost all the legacy mainstream media pushed a completely false reality,” he said. “They lied to you.”
Trump won the election with 50.9% of the popular vote and 295 electoral college votes out of the 270 needed to win. Republicans won control of the Senate with 52 out of 50 seats needed, and are leading in seats in the House of Representatives, although the final results have yet to be declared.
Musk also reported record usage of his platform in the US on Wednesday with nearly six billion hourly mobile seconds tracked during Tuesday’s election.
His message to X users was the legacy media in America lied while “the truth” was permitted on his platform.
“You are the media now,” Musk said on X. “Post your thoughts & observations on X, correct others when wrong and we will have at least one place in the world where you can come to find the truth.”
