President Joe Biden bypassed traditional media in making his shock announcement that he won’t be on the 2024 ticket, instead posting a letter on X. In response, Elon Musk took a victory lap without wasting any time. “White House aides learned Biden was dropping out by reading X,” tweeted the tech magnate. In a chain of further posts in the hours post Biden’s announcement, Musk tried to establish the social network’s role as a direct channel to inform about world events more deftly than cable news and news sites.

The digital delivery of Biden’s momentous decision, which was concurrently posted on Instagram, underscores how social media has remodeled the presidential bully pulpit, becoming the primary news vector for American voters in the most messy election cycle of the contemporary era.

X, which has struggled ever since the planet’s richest man acquired it in October 2022, has reemerged as a primary source of news for an American public hungry for instant news updates — especially in the last wild eight days, which included the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, a groundswell of prominent Democrats demanding that Biden should drop out of the race, and a Republican National Convention akin to some pageant where Trump’s nomination was secured.

During almost 21 months since the Tesla CEO Musk took over X, he has introduced modifications to the platform that have effectively made it far harder to separate fact from fiction online. Musk endorsing Trump personally in the hours post the shooting at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, raised questions about the impartiality of the platform as a source for news. Even though X had added custom icons for MAGA (Make America Great Again) adherents to display their backing of Trump during the Republican National Convention, the network was indispensable for Biden in seeking to get the word out on social media.

“The last week has solidified the dominant role social media has for political communications and breaking news,” said Katie Harbath (a former Facebook public policy director who is presently chief global affairs officer at Duco Experts, a tech consulting firm). “It comes with costs but it is the most efficient way to get news to the most number of people as fast as possible.”

Biden was not alone in prioritizing social media to share news in recent days. Trump gave his first public reaction to his assassination attempt on Truth Social, his right-wing platform, where he also publicized his choice of Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate. Biden’s communiqué found a large audience online, amassing more than 700,000 likes and more than 180 million views in the first two hours it was online.