The richest man in the world buys one of the most popular social media platforms and uses it as a propaganda and disinformation machine to support his presidential candidates. What could go wrong?
Elon Musk has made at least 87 claims about the U.S. presidential election this year that fact-checkers have rated as false or misleading, according to an analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit organization that tracks misinformation. It turns out that he posted something.
These false and misleading posts generated more than 2 billion views, and not just because Musk is an influential figure. He was also found to be tweaking X's algorithm to ensure that his posts reach everyone on the platform, because apparently having 203 million followers isn't enough.
CNN first reported the CCDH data, showing that Musk has donated more than $118 million to a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump's re-election bid, making him the largest donor to the Trump campaign. He pointed out that it was happening. The PAC has been leading an ad campaign targeting registered Republicans masquerading as Democrats and promoting unpopular policies unsupported by Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign. The ads are cartoonishly “woke”, with lines like “Help us make our schools as trans-friendly as possible” and “The state's forced buyback program has increased the number of guns and tragedies.” It means to reduce the number of Kamala Harris gets it! ”
According to a report from 404 Media, PAC has increased its Facebook ad spending by 1,000% in the past few weeks. Meta waited until the end of last week to ban ads about social issues, elections, and politics.
Political ads still run on X, accompanied by Musk's megaphone.
Anyone with an X account has witnessed a barrage of political messages from Mr. Musk, many of which supported Mr. Trump and far-right political discourse. Musk's political posts have garnered more than 17.1 billion views since the billionaire executive officially endorsed President Trump in July, according to CCDH. That's twice as many views as all political ads on the platform combined during the same period, and nearly the same as spending $24 million on campaign ads, according to CCDH.
Researchers found that between July 13 and October 25, Musk created a total of 746 articles mentioning terms related to the U.S. election, including Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, voting, and ballots. Post identified. The analysis is based on Company X's publicly available data on Musk's posts and political campaign spending to promote advertising on the platform.
Among the examples of false or misleading claims Mr. Musk has made about Voter import on an unprecedented scale!'' This post has been viewed 21 million times.
Another claimed, “If the Democratic big government agencies win this election, they will ban voter IDs not only in California but nationwide.” It was viewed 11.9 million times.
The study found that Musk's claim that Democrats support “importing voters” has been viewed nearly 1.3 billion times.
Musk also promotes a narrative about unreliable voting systems, which has been viewed 532 million times, according to the analysis.
There is little evidence on record to support the claim that illegal voters are being “imported” to support a particular political party. Voter fraud is rare in the United States because of strict verification measures at the state and federal level. Experts say mail-in ballots are verified when voters request them and then verified again when they return their ballots.
CCDH, like other organizations that criticize Musk, has become a target of Musk. called The group is a “criminal organization.” Mr. Musk, who calls himself a champion of free speech, tried to sue CCDH last year, but the suit was thrown out by a federal judge who said the lawsuit was aimed at “punishing” CCDH for criticizing X.
CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said in a statement that X had “descended into a hellscape of hate and disinformation” after Musk removed many of the site's guardrails protecting it from false information. said. Musk claimed that X's community notes feature allows community members to fact-check posts, but Ahmed said the feature is “more than a Band-Aid.”
“Elon Musk has shown his disdain for the truth through his personal actions. Is it any wonder his solution to the X disinformation crisis has been so lackluster?” Ahmed said.
Ahmed also took to the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt last week to warn about the use of generative AI to reduce the marginal cost of producing and distributing disinformation to zero.
“In theory, we now have a perfect looping system where generative AI generates, distributes, and evaluates performance – A/B testing and improvement,” he said. “You have a perpetual bull machine. That's pretty worrying.”
TechCrunch has reached out to X for comment.