Musk, Trump loyalists clash over over H-1B visas for Indian tech workers

Elon Musk has announced a new algorithm on his social media platform X that appears to be disproportionately punishing conservatives who have vocally opposed bringing in more tech workers from India.

Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter in 2022 in the name of promoting free speech and pushing back on censorship, and has since renamed the platform X. He has also been a prolific user. Earlier this week, one of his posts about H-1B visa workers kicked the proverbial hornet’s nest.

“Just a reminder that the algorithm is trying to maximize unregretted user-seconds,” Musk posted on Friday. “If far more credible, verified subscriber accounts (not bots) mute/block your account compared to those who like your posts, your reach will decline significantly.”

Accounts found to engage in “coordinated attacks” targeting others with mutes or blocks will themselves be categorized as spam, Musk added.

Musk’s announcement came a few minutes after he called critics of his immigration views “subtards,” insulting their intelligence.

Meanwhile, several accounts that have openly disagreed with Musk on the issue of bringing in foreign workers have reported that their verification checkmark has disappeared. It is unclear whether the removal of their subscription status was a punitive measure by X, as the comMusk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have been tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to head DOGE, a special advisory body tasked with identifying government inefficiency. They appear to have stumbled into a minefield earlier this week, proclaiming their desire to expand the number of foreign workers recruited under the H-1B visa program so the US can “keep winning.”

“Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct,” Musk explained.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long,” Ramaswamy wrote, arguing that a “culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” so Big Tech had no choice but to bring in foreigners.

Critics have pointed out that the H-1B program has strayed from its original purpose to bring in the “best and the brightest” talent to fill specialized roles. In practice, hundreds of X users argued, it has allowed US corporations to fire domestic talent and replace it with lower-paid, entry-level guest workers, mainly from the Indian subcontinent. They also brought up the fact that Musk immigrated from South Africa, while Ramaswamy’s parents came from India.