The Elite Effect: Blocking Political Leaders on X Decreases Misinformation Susceptibility and Low-credibility Content Sharing

We tested whether reducing the visibility of political elites in social media feeds can improve belief accuracy. In a preregistered field experiment, a custom mobile app directly manipulated participants’ X (formerly Twitter) timelines, randomly assigning users to a control condition, Elite Blocking (hiding posts authored by political elites), or Elite Scrubbing (additionally removing posts mentioning elites). This design isolates elite-authored content from the broader stream of elite-referential discourse while preserving users’ follow networks and ordinary scrolling experience. Both interventions decreased exposure to low-credibility and highly partisan material, with Elite Scrubbing producing larger reductions than Elite Blocking. Resharing of such content dropped substantially, indicating lower downstream diffusion. These feed-level shifts translated into significantly lower misinformation susceptibility and improved factual accuracy. Our findings illuminate how elite visibility is a consequential and actionable design lever for platform content moderation. Adjusting the prominence of elite-centered discourse can yield informational and epistemic benefits without broadly suppressing political content.