Did Taylor Swift say Elon Musk is "the first person in history, to be radicalized by his own algorithm"? No, that's not true: A psychology professor at the University of Cambridge claimed credit for the quote after it went viral in mid-November 2024. Lead Stories found no obvious sign that the singer had made such a comment after searching Swift's social media accounts.
The claim appeared in a post on Threads on November 19, 2024, (archived here) that read:
'Elon Musk, the first human in history, to be radicalized by his own algorithm'
~ Taylor Swift
This is how the post looked on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Sat Nov 23 16:33:39 2024 UTC)
There is no evidence that Swift said Musk had been "radicalized by his own algorithm." Rather, this quote is attributed to Sander van der Linden (archived here), a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge.
A Google keyword search (archived here) returned an opinion piece published by The Independent on August 8, 2024, titled "Has Elon Musk been radicalised by his own platform?" (archived here) in which its author, van der Linden, wrote:
It is no secret that Elon Musk's politics have shifted significantly over the past few years. Once considered a fairly benign moderate, the Tesla CEO has increasingly interacted with ideas and figures on the fringes of the right.
What could explain this process of radicalisation? One obvious difference between the old and new Musk is that he has been spending an inordinate amount of time on Twitter/X. He's liking, engaging, and amplifying low-quality content, which leads to more recommendations of similar content, reinforcing his own views and opinions. In short, he's created his very own echo chamber.
It's almost as if he's not realising that he's radicalising himself on his own platform. We know from neuropsychological research that learning your views align with those of others activates reward circuits in the brain. It's like a dopamine hit. Sadly, Musk seems to have forgotten an essential rule of good business: don't get high on your own supply.
When some social media users began attributing these ideas to Swift, van der Linden claimed credit. He posted the following to X account on November 15, 2024 (archived here):
So there's viral memes on social media attributing quotes about @elonmusk radicalizing himself on his own platform to Taylor Swift ... it turns out to be my quote! Too bad, as it would have been cooler if Taylor had said it....
https://x.com/Sander_vdLinden/status/1858867719765954619
Lead Stories conducted keyword searches of Swift's Facebook page and X account (archived here), which returned no relevant results. Lead Stories also used Google to examine the singer's posts on Instagram (archived here) and TikTok (archived here), as these sites do not permit direct searches of individual members' accounts. No matches were found on either platform.
Lead Stories ran a keyword search on Google and found only duplicates of the quote attributed to Swift and fact checks by other agencies (archived here).
At the time of this writing, PolitiFact also reviewed the same claim.
Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Taylor Swift can be found here. Debunks of claims related to Elon Musk can be read here.
