X Doesn’t Want You to Know About Ukraine. It probably doesn’t want you to read this post.

Let me explain something that should be blindingly obvious to anyone paying attention, which, given that we’re talking about social media users, means almost nobody.

When Elon Musk open-sourced Twitter’s recommendation algorithm in April 2023, researchers went through the code with the enthusiasm of archaeologists who’ve just found a pyramid. What they found was remarkable. Tweets about Ukraine were being down-ranked in the same category as content judged to be disinformation. Not Russian propaganda. Not Kremlin talking points. Actual reporting about the country being bombed. Buried. Algorithmically. On purpose.

That was just the start.

Under previous ownership, Twitter had labelled state-affiliated accounts, including Russia Today, and excluded them from recommendation algorithms to reduce their reach. Under Musk, these practices were discontinued. So the Kremlin’s favourite television channel, a propaganda outfit so flagrant that the EU banned it outright, got its amplification restored.

Marvellous. Free speech in action.

Then came the For You feed. Some paying accounts were being used to spread fake news, notably pro-Kremlin propaganda related to the Russo-Ukrainian War. You pay your eight dollars, you get your blue tick, and the algorithm helpfully shoves your pro-Putin content into the eyeballs of millions. It’s a business model that would make a KGB general weep with admiration.

And then, in February 2025, came the moment that stripped away any remaining pretence.

What apparently set Musk off was Community Notes correcting posts on X that claimed Volodymyr Zelensky had low approval ratings among Ukrainians. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology had just published results showing 57 percent of Ukrainians trusted Zelensky, directly contradicting Trump’s claim that the man was deeply unpopular.

Musk’s response was instant. He announced he would “fix” Community Notes, claiming it was being “gamed by governments and legacy media,” without providing any evidence whatsoever.

Think about that. The man built his entire acquisition pitch on being the free speech absolutist, the brave champion of open information, the one adult prepared to let truth fight its own battles on the platform. Then truth turned around and fact-checked his mate in the White House about a war, and he announced he was going to “fix” truth.

Meanwhile, AI bots were spreading Russian disinformation across the platform at a success rate of approximately 33 percent, with the Pravda network alone releasing around three and a half million inaccurate AI-produced articles during 2024. Musk found no algorithm worth “fixing” there.

In January 2025, the European Commission formally demanded X hand over its internal documentation about the algorithm and any recent changes to it, following accusations of manipulation benefitting far-right viewpoints. X has said very little in response, which is itself something of an answer.

The situation is actually quite simple. X is not a town square. It is a privately owned information environment run by a man with a financial stake in Tesla factories in China, political ambitions in Washington, and apparently a strong ideological attachment to the idea that Ukraine started the war Russia is currently fighting on Ukrainian soil.

When the algorithm buries Ukraine and amplifies the Kremlin, it is not a glitch.

When the fact-checking tool gets “fixed” the moment it corrects anti-Ukraine misinformation, it is not a coincidence. And when the richest man on earth stands in front of a Conservative conference waving a chainsaw and then goes home to break his own platform’s moderation system in defence of a narrative that originated in Moscow, it is not complicated.

It is, in fact, exactly what it looks like.