Source: AFP
False or misleading US election claims posted on X by Elon Musk have garnered nearly 1.2 billion views this year, a watchdog said on Thursday, underscoring the billionaire’s potential influence in the highly polarized White House race.
Ahead of the November election, researchers have raised the alarm that X, formerly Twitter, is a hotbed of political disinformation.
They have also pointed out that Musk, who bought the platform in 2022 and is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, appears to be misleading voters by spreading lies on his personal account.
Researchers from the Center to Combat Digital Hate (CCDH) found 50 posts since January by Musk – who has more than 193 million followers on the social networking site – with election claims debunked by independent fact-checkers.
None of the posts featured “Community Note,” a crowd-sourced moderation tool that X has promoted as a way for users to add content to posts, CCDH said, raising questions about its effectiveness in combating fake news. .
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“Elon Musk is abusing his privileged position as the owner of a…politically influential social media platform to sow misinformation that breeds discord and mistrust,” CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed warned.
“The lack of Community Notes on these posts shows that his business is woefully failing to contain the kind of algorithm-fueled incitement that we all know can lead to real-world violence.”
The posts analyzed by CCDH contained claims that have been widely debunked, such as that Democrats are encouraging illegal immigration to “import voters” or that elections are vulnerable to fraud. Both claims garnered hundreds of millions of views.
Last week, Musk faced a barrage of criticism for sharing with his followers a deeply fake AI video of Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
In it, a Harris impersonator calls President Joe Biden senile before declaring that he “doesn’t know the first thing about running the country.”
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The video, which has been viewed by millions, carried no indication that it was a parody — other than a laughing emoji. Only later did Musk clarify that the video was intended as satire.
“Musk is acting as if he is unacceptable despite growing evidence of the harmful role he is personally playing in fueling misinformation and division in the run-up to the US election,” Nora Benavidez, of the advocacy group Free Press Action Fund, told AFP.
“As his behavior veers closer to election interference, it is up to others — the public, regulators and advertisers — to hold him accountable for his undemocratic behavior.”
Musk, who bought the platform in 2022 for $44 billion, has faced increasing scrutiny over his potential influence on voters.
On Monday, a bipartisan group of five US secretaries of state sent an open letter to Musk, calling on him to fix X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, known as Grok, after it produced disinformation about the election.
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Hours after Biden dropped out of the presidential race last month and endorsed Harris as the Democratic nominee, Groke was spewing false information about voting deadlines that was amplified by other platforms.
X — which has also faced criticism for stoking tensions during recent far-right riots across England — has gutted trust and safety groups and scaled back content curtailment efforts once used to curb misinformation, making it the which researchers call a misinformation haven.
X did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
Source: AFP
