Daily Times

With incendiary, misleading posts to his 200 million followers, Elon Musk has courted criticism for cranking up the political temperature ahead of an already polarized US election through his influential platform that is plagued with misinformation.

Researchers fear there may be little to stop Musk — who has endorsed Donald Trump — from using X, formerly Twitter, and his personal account to sway voters in favor of the Republican nominee, call into question the legitimacy of the electoral process, and provoke violence against political rivals and poll workers.

“Musk has a huge following on X and he treats the platform like his own misinformation megaphone,” Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), told AFP.

Musk has amplified debunked falsehoods from politicians, including Trump, that Democrats are “importing” migrants into the United States to vote in the November election and that immigrants from Haiti in Ohio were killing and eating pets.

Soon after a second assassination attempt on Trump, Musk posted a comment — alongside a thinking emoji — that “no one is even trying to assassinate” President Joe Biden and the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. Musk deleted the post, which the White House called “irresponsible” while adding that violence should never be “encouraged or joked about.”

Musk also faced criticism for sharing a deepfake video in which a voiceover mimicking Harris calls Biden senile and declares that she does not “know the first thing about running the country.” The video was originally posted by an X account linked to the conservative podcaster Chris Kohls and labeled a “parody,” but Musk’s repost made no such disclosure. False or misleading election claims on X by Musk have amassed nearly 1.2 billion views, CCDH reported last month. Its researchers identified 50 posts by Musk since January containing election claims that were debunked by independent fact-checkers.

X did not respond to a request for comment.