Elon Musk is using Twitter’s reach as a real-time news source for millions of users to try and influence the results of the 2024 presidential election in favor of former President Donald Trump, almost two years after he bought the social media platform and rebranded it as X.
Musk has been making his political presence known for several months now. In addition to spreading racial conspiracy theories regarding the Biden administration’s immigration policy, he has been fixated on the idea of a “woke mind virus,” a word some conservatives use to characterize progressive causes, and he has warned of the approaching “doom” for the nation if a “red wave” does not appear in November.
Now, however, Musk—the owner and most followed user on X—has switched to a more overt campaigning style for the former president Donald Trump. For one of the richest men in the world and the founder of a well-known social network, this is an uncommon action.
In previous elections, social media platforms have been utilized by campaigns to garner support, by foreign actors attempting to sway election results, and by the industry itself, which faced criticism in 2020 for limiting access to news about Hunter Biden’s laptop.Additionally, a few tech executives have made public who they think would make the best president.
However, the big platforms themselves—and particularly its owners—usually don’t try to influence users’ voting decisions beyond making sure everyone has access to basic, factual information about voting and eliminating influence operations that aim to subtly influence individuals.
In contrast, Musk has made his own political message machine out of the platform he paid $44 billion to acquire. He uses it to try and sway the opinions of his over 190 million followers and occasionally spreads untrue information from the top.
In a post that garnered 2.3 million likes last month, Musk formally endorsed Trump. Additionally, he invited Trump on Monday for a cordial two-plus-hour livestreamed talk on X, during which he stood by while the former president made at least twenty false assertions about anything from immigration and crime to tax cuts and other topics without challenging him.
With his campaign team posting on X prior of the event, “we’re asking YOU to make this President Trump’s BIGGEST FUNDRAISING DAY EVER!” Trump leveraged the conversation to raise money. Utilizing the occasion, X sent users a notification with Trump’s profile picture on it, urging them to subscribe to the service.
CNN has requested comments from X and the Trump team.
“Elon is an amazing guy. I spoke with him for two and a half hours last night, and we had all-time record views and hits. The only thing the Fake News wants to say is that the show started a little late and that the servers crashed due to the massive volume!”
The astounding number of individuals who were listening is what they ought to have been reporting. I detest fake news media outlets. How unfortunate for our nation! Trump stated this on Truth Social Tuesday in a post.
“A potentially useful set of instruments to spread misinformation”
The discussion expanded on Musk’s prior attempts to back Trump, whom the billionaire reinstated on the network soon after purchasing what was then known as Twitter. More recently, Musk has donated to a political action group that supports Trump’s candidacy and sent false information about Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s rival.
According to an analysis released last week by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a social media watchdog organization that promotes stricter regulation of platforms and which Musk unsuccessfully attempted to sue last year for its critical reports about hate speech on the platform, the false or misleading claims Musk made about the US elections on X have been viewed 1.2 billion times.
For instance, he has made false claims that undocumented immigrants can vote in US elections and questioned the security of voting machines.
According to Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, “democracy depends on people’s trust in the integrity of (election) outcomes and their willingness to trust those outcomes even when their favored candidate doesn’t win,” Musk’s voting claims are “deeply damaging,” Weiser told CNN.
In apparent violation of X’s manipulated media policy, Musk also published a video in which artificial intelligence (AI) was employed to make it appear as though Harris had said things she had not. The sole emoji used to indicate to followers that the video was phony was a laughing face. The video was not marked with a “community note,” X’s community fact-checking function, which Musk used as an excuse to severely damage the company’s reputation, weeks after it was uploaded.
With Musk stating that “civil war is inevitable,” the billionaire is facing criticism for allowing misleading allegations over immigration in the UK to run amok. This is in addition to X’s political posts. Government officials in Britain said that conversations on the site stoked violent, far-right protests around the nation. This served as a reminder that words spoken online, particularly by one of the wealthiest and most influential individuals in the world, can have real-world repercussions.
“The damage increases with the prominence and trustworthiness of the person disseminating the false information,” Weiser stated. “(Musk) has a huge platform, a huge bank account, and a huge reputation right now, and those are powerful tools to use to spread misinformation and conspiracies.”
After speaking with Trump on Monday night, Musk declared that he was “happy” to organize a similar gathering for Harris, who hasn’t given an interview since announcing her candidacy as the Democratic contender for president. “We’re in massive trouble, frankly, with a Kamala administration,” Musk said to Trump. I genuinely believe that your victory is crucial for the welfare of the nation.
The shifting cultural landscape of X
Beyond his own writings, a lot of Musk’s actions as the proprietor of X—such as his reinstatement of conspiracy theorists and White nationalists—have led to a larger, rightward movement in the platform’s culture. In addition, he made changes to the platform’s policies to make it simpler for politicians and political candidates to get newsworthy exemptions, which save them from having their content removed or restricted.
Furthermore, X blocked the account of “White Dudes for Harris,” a group that had been raising money and supporting the vice president’s campaign, and twice flagged the group’s posts as spam. These actions raise concerns about the platform’s adherence to Musk’s professed goal of “free speech” and whether it is repressing opinions that diverge from Musk’s.
Additionally, a group of secretaries of state criticized Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, which users access through X, last week for allegedly disseminating “false information” regarding Harris’ purported ineligibility to run for president in 2024 in a number of critical states. The secretaries pleaded with Musk to “immediately implement changes” on the X platform in a letter.
“I was around when Twitter made the industry-leading decision to cease accepting political advertisements. We genuinely meant it when we said that “freedom of speech didn’t entitle you to freedom of reach.” Lara Cohen
Prior to the Trump event on Monday, the platform’s former vice president of marketing, who departed the firm following Musk’s purchase, stated in a Threads post. “Cut to the Trump campaign’s infomercial for tonight. The platform and its owner are depressingly declining daily, which is pitiful.
Attempting to enter Trump’s government
Should Trump win reelection, Musk may have the opportunity to whisper in his ear, which would give the billionaire even more influence on the international scene. Furthermore, it might help his commercial empire, which is heavily dependent on contracts with the government and advantageous laws.
Musk disputed the Wall Street Journal’s May report, which said that he and Trump had discussed the billionaire’s possible participation in Trump’s cabinet should he be reelected.
However, Musk made the offer on Monday night to contribute to any prospective Trump administration by helping to control government spending.
During the X conversation, Musk said to Trump, “I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and just ensures that the taxpayer money, the taxpayers’ hard-earned money, is spent in a good way.” “I would be pleased to assist with such a commission.”
Trump stated that he would “love it” if Musk was engaged, calling attention to the billionaire’s “great cutter” status in reference to the cost-cutting actions he has implemented at his businesses.
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