WASHINGTON, Nov 5 — False or misleading claims by billionaire Elon Musk about the United States presidential election have amassed two billion views on social media platform X this year, said a report by non-profit group Centre for Countering Digital Hate.
The platform is also playing a central role in enabling the spread of false information about the critical battleground states that will likely determine the outcome of the presidential race, election and misinformation experts said yesterday.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since taking over the company formerly known as Twitter, Musk has curtailed content moderation and laid off thousands of employees. He has thrown his support behind former president Donald Trump, who is locked in an exceptionally close race against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Musk’s massive reach with nearly 203 million followers helps enable “network effects” in which content on X can jump to other social media and messaging platforms such as Reddit and Telegram, said Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and expert on disinformation.
“X is a conduit from one platform to another,” she said.
At least 87 of Musk’s posts this year have promoted claims about the US election that fact-checkers have rated as false or misleading, amassing two billion views, according to the report.
In Pennsylvania, one of the seven key swing states, some X users have seized on instances of local election administrators flagging incomplete voter registration forms that would not be processed, falsely casting the events as examples of election interference, said Philip Hensley-Robin, Pennsylvania executive director at Common Cause, during a press briefing yesterday.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan organisation that promotes accountable government and voting rights.
Some X accounts implied “that there was voter fraud, when in fact, we know very clearly that election officials and election administrators in all of our counties were following the rules and … therefore only eligible voters are voting,” Hensley-Robin said.
Cyabra, a firm that uses artificial intelligence to detect online disinformation, said yesterday that an X account with 117,000 followers played a key role in helping spread a fake video purporting to show Pennsylvania mail-in ballots for Trump being destroyed.
— Reuters
