Study: Elon Musk influencing US election campaign with disinformation
Elon Musk openly supports the candidacy of Donald Trump as US President, especially informing users of his platform X. He uses numerous fake news and disinformation to influence the election campaign in favor of the Republican, as shown by a study - and successfully so.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is intervening in the US election campaign by spreading a large number of false information, according to a study by online experts, and is gaining enormous attention with these misleading posts on his online platform X. Musk's false messages have already been viewed nearly 1.2 billion times this year, the non-governmental organization Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) reported.
Musk is a supporter of the right-wing former US President and renewed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The billionaire has over 193 million followers on X (formerly Twitter).
The CCDH identified 50 X messages from Musk about the election since January that have been exposed as false or misleading by independent fact-checkers. For example, Musk claimed that US Democrats are deliberately promoting irregular immigration to gain voters, or that the US election system is vulnerable to fraud.
Last week, Musk also faced massive criticism for sharing an AI-manipulated video about Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Musk lacks context for statements
In the video, the vice president was made to say that 81-year-old President Joe Biden is senile and that she is the "ultimate diversity hire". This suggested that Harris obtained her position not because of her qualifications, but due to her ethnic identity as the daughter of an Indian woman and a black Jamaican man. The video, viewed by millions of users, contained only a laughing emoji, without any indication that it was a parody. Musk only clarified later that it was satire.
The CCDH also criticized that none of Musk's false messages about the election were marked with a field for so-called collective notes. This tool is supposed to allow users to add context to potentially misleading posts.
"Elon Musk is abusing his privileged position as the owner of a politically influential social media platform to spread disinformation that generates discord and mistrust," warned CCDH director Imran Ahmed.
X did not initially respond to a request for comment from news agency AFP on the CCDH investigation. Musk is also accused of heating up political tensions in the UK, where there have been far-right riots against immigrants for over a week. The billionaire had previously stated that a civil war in the UK is "inevitable".
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion (around $40 billion) and later renamed it X. He significantly reduced content moderation, allowing the increased spread of false and hateful messages. He also allowed banned users to return to the platform, including Trump and numerous far-right extremists.
Despite his support for Donald Trump's presidency, Elon Musk's use of fake news and disinformation on X to influence elections has been heavily criticized. For instance, Musk shared an AI-manipulated video about Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, claiming it was satire only later, without providing any context initially.
In lighter terms, I'm not going to defend Musk's approach to sharing political content on his platform, as it has led to a lot of confusion and misinformation.
