A recent report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate reveals that posts from Elon Musk containing misleading or false claims about the U.S. elections have reached 2 billion views on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Spreading Misinformation
This massive reach highlights the platform’s growing role in the spread of election misinformation, especially in critical battleground states likely to influence the outcome of the presidential race, experts in election integrity and misinformation stated on Monday.
Since acquiring X, Musk has reduced content moderation, cut thousands of staff members, and expressed public support for former President Donald Trump, who faces a close race against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, according to Ziare.
With nearly 203 million followers, Musk’s posts generate “network effects” that extend to other platforms like Reddit and Telegram, said Kathleen Carley, a professor and disinformation expert at Carnegie Mellon University.
"X serves as a pipeline between platforms," Carley explained, enabling rapid cross-platform spread of content.
87 Fake News Shared by Musk
In response to these concerns, a spokesperson for X noted that the platform’s Community Notes feature, allowing users to add context to posts, is more effective than traditional warning labels at helping users identify misleading content.
However, content moderation on the platform remains a contentious issue, with critics pointing to Musk’s approach as fueling the spread of misinformation, especially on sensitive topics like elections.
The report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that at least 87 of Musk’s posts this year have shared election-related claims that fact-checkers have deemed false or misleading.
The impact of these posts is amplified by the extensive reach of Musk’s follower base, with claims spreading rapidly and influencing narratives in states like Pennsylvania, where election administrators faced increased scrutiny over routine issues like incomplete voter registration forms.
Philip Hensley-Robin, director at Common Cause Pennsylvania, pointed out that some X accounts distorted these routine procedural issues as evidence of voter fraud. “Election officials have followed all protocols to ensure only eligible voters cast ballots,” he emphasized.
Further complicating the landscape, Cyabra, a firm specializing in AI-driven detection of online misinformation, identified an X account with 117,000 followers as central to the spread of a fake video purportedly showing the destruction of mail-in ballots for Trump in Pennsylvania.
While X claims to have acted against several accounts sharing the video, the incident underscores the scale of misinformation challenges on the platform.
