Tesla CEO Elon Musk (R) takes the stage as he joins former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally at the site of his first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on October 5.
Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP

Elon Musk’s fact-checking feature Community Notes does not counter false claims about the US election, the Center to Combat Digital Hate (CCDH) said in a report today.

Of the 283 misleading X posts that CCDH analyzed, 209, or 74 percent of the posts, did not show accurate grades for all X users correcting false and misleading claims about the election, the report said.

“The 209 misleading posts in our sample that did not display the community notes available to all users garnered 2.2 billion views,” CCDH said.

“Community Notes maintains a high bar for making notes effective and maintaining trust across perspectives, and thousands of election and policy-related notes have passed that bar in 2024,” said Keith Coleman, who oversees Community Notes and is vice president of product at X, he declared. Reuters.

Musk, who endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in July, has been on the campaign trail for the past few days, where he spread false claims about the November 5th US election, including false allegations involving undocumented immigrants being allowed to vote.

Social media platforms, including X, have been under surveillance for years spreading misinformation and conspiracy theoriesincluding false information about elections and vaccines.

X launched its “Community Notes” feature last year, which allows users to comment on posts to flag false or misleading content, crowdsourcing fact-checking for users rather than a dedicated team of fact-checkers.

Several governments have expressed concern about content on X’s platform, including Australia, the United Kingdom and Brazil. The latter country had banned X for a period earlier this year.

Polls show Trump in a tight race with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Musk has become one of Trump’s most vocal and biggest financial backers.

X lost a lawsuit filed by the CCDH earlier this year, which blamed him for allowing a rise in hate speech on the social media platform.

Secretaries of state from five US states urged billionaire Musk in August to fix X’s AI chatbot, saying it had spread election-related misinformation.

– Reuters