Elon Musk Not only does he own the pro-Trump social media platform X (formerly Twitter), he’s also one of the platform’s biggest spreaders of election-related misinformation, according to a new report released Thursday by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The report from CCDH, a nonprofit organization focused on protecting civil liberties and holding social media companies accountable, states: They found that 50 false or misleading posts Musk shared on X between January 1 and July 31 of this year had been viewed a whopping 1.2 billion times. The group categorized the posts into three main themes: false claims that Democrats are “importing voters” through illegal immigration (the majority of the content the researchers examined); false claims that voting is vulnerable to fraud; and doctored videos of Kamala Harris (also known as deepfakes).
According to the report, independent fact-checkers determined that all 50 posts Musk shared were false or misleading, but the posts in question did not include “community notes” — X’s user-generated fact-checking system that the company promised would provide context for “potentially misleading posts.” Musk argued in a post on X this week that community notes provide “a clear and immediate way to debunk falsehoods in replies,” adding that “this is not the case with legacy media, which constantly lies, but there is no way to counter their propaganda.”
A deepfake video of X, exposed by Mother Jones on Sunday, quickly went viral. It had over 620,000 views and there was absolutely no indication that it was manipulated.
In a statement accompanying the report, CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed said Musk was “abusing his privileged position as the owner of a small but politically influential social media platform to spread disinformation that seeks to sow discord and mistrust.”
X responded to the following person’s request for comment: Mother Jones With an automated message that said, “I’m busy right now. Check back later.” (The company may have stopped using the automated poop emoji.) Musk endorsed Donald Trump for president last month after the president’s near-assassination.
As I recently reported, not only is this content false and misleading, but at least some of this content appears to violate X’s own terms of service. On July 26, Musk shared a deepfake video that appeared to show Harris calling herself “the ultimate diversity hire” and disparaging President Biden. Musk captioned the video with the caption, “This is awesome,” along with a laughing emoji. Musk’s post has been viewed over 135 million times and remains online despite the fact that X’s policy prohibits sharing “synthetic, manipulated, or decontextualized media that may deceive, confuse, or harm people,” as the CCDH report notes.
X says it only removes these posts for “serious violations of our policies, including misleading media that poses a risk of serious harm to individuals or the community,” but it doesn’t define how it measures “serious violations” or “serious risk of harm.”
And while Musk personally wields enormous influence on X, with more than 193 million followers, the CCDH report uncovers a systemic problem that allows other users with significant influence to spread political misinformation as well. One example: As I reported on Sunday, an account reposting Truth Social’s Donald Trump feed on X shared an apparently doctored video of Harris that appeared to show Harris struggling to finish a sentence. Trump first posted the video to his Truth Social platform on Saturday, but it’s unclear who altered the original video. Mother Jones I exposed the spread on X on Sunday and it was drawn. Although it has been viewed over 620,000 times, there is no indication that the video has been clearly manipulated.
When I asked the Trump campaign about the video, spokesman Stephen Chung (expletive) assured me it was real. But after I asked X about the video on Monday, X’s post was updated with a “manipulated media” label, but the video is still up. (Chung did not respond to a request for additional comment.)
The CCDH report comes as the latest example of growing platforming of misinformation targeting Harris and surveillance of X ahead of the November election. On Monday, five secretaries of state sent a letter to Musk demanding that he “immediately implement changes” to Grok, an AI-powered search assistant available to X’s premium subscribers, after it falsely reported to users that Harris had declared her candidacy too late to be on the ballot in nine states.
The investigation doesn’t seem to be worrying Musk. This week, the X owner continued to attack Harris on the platform he bought in 2022, claiming without evidence that Harris is a “literal communist.” More is expected to come, especially given that Musk is scheduled to “interview” Trump on Monday, according to Trump. If such a conversation does take place, it’s unlikely to be focused or stick to the facts. As my colleague Mark Polman points out, Musk is clearly not a journalist.
