United States president-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and a major Trump donor, would help lead a new entity dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, which would "provide advice and guidance from outside of government”.

The group —whose name forms the acronym DOGE as a nod to Musk’s favourite cryptocurrency, dogecoin — would be co-led by Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump said.

The entity would allow Trump’s incoming administration to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”, the former president said in a statement.

“This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people!” Musk added in the statement.

Later, on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Musk said the world had been “suffering slow strangulation by overregulation”.

“We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good,” he wrote.

“… The absurd regulations get worse every year.

“Unless we push back, everything will become illegal.”

Trump had flagged a formal role for Musk prior to his election victory earlier this month, as the billionaire reportedly donated tens of millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign.

As his role is not within the federal government, Musk would be able to keep leading his companies including X, electric vehicle and battery company Tesla, rocket company SpaceX, artificial intelligence firm xAI, and computer-brain interface company Neuralink.

He also would not be required to disclose his assets or divest any holdings in case of any conflicts of interest.

Ramaswamy, a fellow entrepreneur who declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in February 2023, suspended his campaign in January and endorsed Trump.

X competitors get post-election boost

Alternatives to Musk’s X platform have seen significant increases in user numbers since last week’s US election.

Bluesky, which began as a Twitter research project in 2019 before going independent in 2021, has crossed the 15 million user mark and reached the top of Apple’s App Store chart in the US.

Meta’s Threads platform has still outperformed Bluesky’s growth, reportedly seeing around 1 million new signups per day and reaching more than 275 million monthly users, up from around 200 million in August.

Threads and Bluesky were both in the top 10 most popular free apps in Apple’s Australian App Store at the time of writing.

X, meanwhile, was at 72.

X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino took to the platform on Thursday to assure users, and to claim X usage was “at an all-time high”.

"To all of our users -- of every interest, political party, and point of view -- you will always have a place to engage and join the global conversation freely and safely,” she said.

“Legacy gatekeepers are yesterday’s ‘news.’”

Farewell, X

Global news organisation The Guardian announced on Thursday that it would no longer post its stories or content on its more than 80 official X accounts.

“This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism,” it said in a statement.

“The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”

The Guardian said its reporters could still use X for newsgathering purposes, and X users would still be able to share its articles there.

Responding to the announcement, Musk wrote on X that The Guardian was “irrelevant” and a “laboriously vile propaganda machine”.

The self-described “free speech absolutist” has previously reinstated X accounts owned by the likes of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and, of course, Donald Trump.