NEW YORK (AP) — Just hours after the alleged assassination attempt on Donald Trump over the weekend, Elon Musk posted a thoughtful emoji on his social media platform X and the comment that “nobody is even trying to assassinate the Democratic president and vice president.”
Amid anti-Islam riots in Britain sparked by a false rumor, Musk declared that “civil war is inevitable” in the country.
And when an anonymous X-user doctored data to counterfeit a surge in questionable voter registrations in three U.S. states, Musk amplified the false post, calling it “extremely concerning.”
All three posts sparked a fierce backlash from public officials who called Musk’s words irresponsible and misleading. While his words have amassed millions of views and thousands of shares, they also illustrate the ability of one of the world’s most influential people to spread fear, hate and misinformation during tense political moments around the world. That’s especially true because he owns the social platform that used to be Twitter, giving Musk the authority to dictate how its content reaches users.
Musk’s inexact posts to his 200 million followers and the lack of security on his website have raised fears that he could manipulate public trust as Election Day approaches in the U.S. He recently endorsed Trump’s presidential bid and is becoming more personally involved in politics – he has even agreed to lead a commission on government efficiency should Trump win re-election.
Trump praised Musk during an event Monday night, relishing the tech billionaire’s support and calling him his “friend.” Musk did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Experts and election officials fear at least that Musk could lead people to question the legitimacy of the election, but they also fear that his words could spark threats and violence against election workers or candidates.
“X and Musk are dangerously and irresponsibly inflaming the political mood at a critical moment,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “This is shameful.”
The 53-year-old billionaire, who bought and revamped Twitter in 2022, has designed his social media site as a marketplace of ideas where people can speak freely without censorship, a move that has been welcomed by many conservatives. He has often touted X as a news source superior to mainstream media, where users can post without fear and know the “truth.”
But the changes Musk made to the company over the course of two years also meant that misinformation was able to spread largely unhindered.
He has disbanded the company’s trust and safety advisory group and stopped enforcing the content moderation and hate speech rules the site followed before his takeover. He has reinstated the accounts of conspiracy theorists, encouraged engagement on the platform through payouts and content partnerships, and introduced a community notes feature that sometimes results in posts being tagged with misleading comments.
Unsubstantiated claims from both sides of the political spectrum are garnering thousands of shares on Musk’s X. After a gunman shot Trump in the ear during an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, far-left users shared false conspiracy theories that the former president orchestrated the attack. And after the debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, far-right users spread the false claim that Harris was wearing an earpiece.
Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Musk has degraded the site to the point where it is a shadow of what it was in 2020, when it was considered a relatively reliable information hub.
“Twitter or X has a very different public reputation today. There’s a reason why millions of people have left the platform and advertisers have too,” Hasen said. “It spreads terrible messages. … The question is whether the marketplace of ideas works well enough” that people recognize those messages as untrustworthy, Hasen added.
Musk and many Republicans disagree, saying the site, under its previous ownership, wrongly censored right information about the origins of COVID-19 and President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, when the facts were not immediately available.
Musk uses his platform to post about his companies Tesla and SpaceX, share his personal opinion that more people should have children, and make jokes through memes and other content he finds entertaining. He also increasingly uses the site to back up unsubstantiated claims made by politicians, including that Democrats are “importing” migrants into the country in order to vote and that Haitian migrants are killing and eating pets in Ohio.
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, said in an interview earlier this month that Musk’s campaign posts had created a “whirlpool of disinformation” that was making it complex for election officials to provide voters with facts.
“I know the vast majority of election officials are just trying to keep their heads down and do their jobs,” she said. “The challenge is how do we communicate information about our work to citizens, many of whom follow Musk or are members of X or on the platform?”
Some election officials have tried to contact Musk directly to educate him and his supporters. In July, the Republican election official who oversees elections in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, sent Musk an X-post inviting him to a free tour of the county’s polling facility.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, joined four other secretaries of state in writing a letter to Musk this summer when Musk’s AI platform Grok published false information about election rules. He said Musk deserved credit for belatedly correcting the misinformation.
Simon said that even before Musk bought Twitter, the platform had helped correct misinformation about the election, and that he hoped Musk could do the same, regardless of his personal beliefs.
“It’s one thing if you don’t like this or that voting system in Minnesota,” Simon said, but factually incorrect information about the election must be corrected.
Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, also commented on one of Musk’s posts last month to correct the misconception that paper ballots are not used in most U.S. elections. She wrote that in the last presidential election in 2020, “all states with close presidential election counts actually used paper records so that votes could be counted, recounted and verified to ensure accuracy.”
The owner of X sometimes backtracked when he realized his posts weren’t good. Earlier this month, he caused outrage when one of his posts promoted an interview between right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson and a Holocaust revisionist. He then deleted the interview.
Musk also deleted Sunday’s post in which he mused that Biden and Harris had not been targeted in assassination attempts. White House spokesman Andrew Bates nevertheless responded, calling the post “irresponsible” and saying that violence “should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about.”
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, said most celebrities are careful with their words, aware that not everyone will understand their jokes or respond appropriately to them. Musk, he said, never had such a filter.
Still, Vaidhyanathan said Musk’s influence may be overblown when it comes to political misinformation. His platform has lost money and advertisers, and he is just one of many who have long made false claims about elections.
“Musk is just another voice in this cacophony,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta, Chris Megerian in Washington and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
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