WASHINGTON – Billionaire Elon Musk’s false or misleading claims about the US election garnered 2 billion views on social media platform X in 2024, according to a report by the non-profit group Center for Countering Digital Hate.

The platform also plays a central role in enabling the spread of false information about critical battleground states that will likely determine the outcome of the presidential race, election and disinformation experts said on Nov. 4.

An X spokesperson said the company’s Community Notes feature, which allows users to add additional context to posts, is more effective at helping people identify misleading content than traditional warning flags on posts.

US government officials and voting rights advocates have warned against election-related misinformation as they urge social media platforms, including X, to take steps to remove any false information about the vote.

Since taking over the company formerly known as Twitter, Mr. Musk has reduced content moderation and fired thousands of employees. He threw his support behind former President Donald Trump, who is locked in an exceptionally close race against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

The massive push by Mr Musk, who has nearly 203 million followers, is helping to enable “network effects” where content on X can bounce across other social media and messaging platforms such as Reddit and Telegram, Dr Kathleen said Carley, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor and disinformation expert. “X is a pipeline from one platform to another,” she said.

At least 87 of Mr. Musk’s posts since 2024 promoted claims about the US election that fact-checkers rated as false or misleading, garnering 2 billion views, according to the Center to Combat Digital Hate.

Mr Musk’s political posts have garnered 17.1 billion views since endorsing Donald Trump in July – more than twice as many views as all US political campaign ads that X recorded in its data set of disclosure of political ads during the same period, the non-profit group added. .

Among Mr. Musk’s posts that were described in the report as false or misleading were those that claimed “importing voters,” such as “triple digits” in the past four years of undocumented immigrants in embattled states , as well as posts questioning “integrity.” of voting”.

Last week, the same non-profit organization said that Musk’s X fact-checking feature, Community Notes, failed to counter false claims about the US election.

In Pennsylvania, one of seven key swing states, some X users reported cases where local election administrators flagged incomplete voter registration forms that would not be processed, falsely portraying the events as examples of election interference, said Mr. Philip Hensley-Robin. Pennsylvania executive director of Common Cause during a Nov. 4 press briefing.

Common Cause is a non-partisan organization that promotes responsible government and voting rights.

Some X accounts suggested “that there was voter fraud, when in fact we know very clearly that election officials and election administrators in all our counties were following the rules and … therefore only eligible voters are voting,” Mr. Hensley said- Robin.

Cyabra, a firm that uses artificial intelligence to detect online disinformation, said on Nov. 4 that an X account with 117,000 followers was instrumental in helping spread a fake video purporting to show mail-in ballots of Pennsylvania for Trump are destroyed.

X’s spokesperson said the platform has taken action against many of the accounts that shared the video.
Reuters