WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk’s false or misleading claims about the US election have garnered 2 billion views on social media platform X this year, 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 Monday.

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since taking over the company formerly known as Twitter, Musk has reduced content moderation and laid off 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.

Musk’s massive move, with nearly 203 million followers, is helping to enable “network effects” where content on X can jump to other social media and messaging platforms such as Reddit and Telegram, said Kathleen Carley, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert in the field of computer science. misinformation. “X is a pipeline from one platform to another,” she said.

At least 87 of Musk’s posts this year 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 report.

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 Philip Hensley-Robin, Pennsylvania. executive director at Common Cause during a press briefing on Monday.

Common Cause is a nonpartisan organization that promotes accountable 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 of our counties were following the rules and … therefore only eligible voters are voting,” Hensley-Robin said.

Cyabra, a firm that uses artificial intelligence to detect online misinformation, said Monday that an X account with 117,000 followers played a key role in helping spread a fake video purporting to show mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania for Trump they are destroyed.