September 28:
Elon Musk has under fire for stirring up political tensions before of a highly divisive US election on his important platform, which he uses to disseminate false information to his 200 million followers.
Experts are worried that Musk, who has backed Donald Trump, could use X (formerly Twitter) and his personal account to influence voters to support the Republican candidate, cast doubt on the validity of the election, and incite violence against opponents and election officials.
"Musk has a huge following on X and he treats the platform like his own misinformation megaphone," said Imran Ahmed of the prominent monitoring group Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) . Musk has emphasized the fallacious claims made by politicians, such as Trump, that the Democrats are "importing" people to vote in November and that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were slaughtering and eating pets. Posting a reply with a thinking emoji, Musk quickly responded to a second attempt on Trump's assassination by claiming that "no one is even trying to assassinate" Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden, the Democratic candidates.
The White House criticized Musk's remark, calling it "irresponsible" and emphasizing that violence should never be "encouraged or joked about." Musk immediately removed the post. Another reason Musk was criticized was because he shared a deepfake video that included a voiceover imitating Harris claiming that Biden is old and that she "knows the first thing about running the country."
While the original poster, an X account associated with conservative podcaster Chris Kohls, tagged the video as a "parody," Musk failed to include that information in his repost. Last month, CCDH claimed that approximately 1.2 billion views had been accrued by Musk's false or misleading election claims on X. Its analysts found fifty posts made by Musk since January that included election-related assertions that were later disproven by third-party fact-checkers.
X was asked to remark, but he chose not to. Analysts have speculated that Musk has taken up Trump's responsibilities on the platform.
"What gave Trump's tweets so much impact in 2016 -- and throughout his presidency -- was not just that they were seen by people on Twitter, but how much media coverage they got," expressed Joshua Tucker, co-director of the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics, in an interview with AFP. "What is happening with Musk these days on Twitter/X feels similar: his posts are not just seen on the site, but they also seem to be getting a lot of pickup in the media."
From its prominence as a repository of trustworthy information during the 2020 election to its current state, the platform has undergone significant changes. For the four and a half years after he paid $44 billion to acquire it, Musk has tirelessly worked to portray the platform as an alternative to conventional media that is free of censorship, garnering praise from conservatives in the United States who are very opposed to social media content regulation.
The site has become a sewer of falsehood due to his actions, which include reducing content moderation efforts, removing trust and safety teams, and re-adding notorious conspiracy theorists. Five US states wrote an open letter to Musk in August, begging him to fix Grok, X's AI chatbot, after it spread election-related false material.
Even in the United States, Musk isn't usually given carte blanche to let people publish whatever they want. Musk was ordered by a prominent Brazilian judge to suspend X after he refused to erase several right-wing accounts that were accused of propagating fake news and failed to designate a new local legal representation as instructed.
After the company's attorneys claimed that X had followed the instructions, Musk seemed to give in last week. In the meantime, X is the subject of a comprehensive investigation by EU regulators looking into its ability to fight disinformation. Major fines or an order to comply with EU regulations may be imposed on X if it is determined to be at fault. Similar legislation is in the works in Australia, and new regulations in the UK are due to be implemented, which may provide authorities greater authority over the content control mechanisms used by platforms.
"Musk's reputation is slowly losing in the court of public opinion, with people increasingly calling out his authoritarian tactics," said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the nonprofit watchdog Free Press,"He can continue down this sad path, but it's a losing battle."
