(New York) November 2022: Elon Musk announces a new era at Twitter, which he acquired a month earlier. “Twitter 2.0 will be much more efficient, transparent and impartial,” he tweets after accusing the social network of having “interfered in the election.”
May 2023: Twitter CEO promises that false claims of election fraud “will be fixed” on his still-unbranded platform. When asked by a CNBC reporter for a firm guarantee, he replies: “Oh yes! 100%.”
August 2024: Elon Musk is accused of reneging on his promises and using his enormous influence to help Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, whom he supported on the day of the assassination attempt on him and whom he is due to interview this Monday evening.
An influence that he exerts not only on his site, which gives pride of place to false allegations, conspiracy theories and hateful remarks, but also in the key states of the 2024 presidential election.
The question is whether this influence will have an effect on the vote next November in the United States, as well as on the social or political climate of his adopted country before and after the American election.
Misinformation about X
Elon Musk and his social network, known since July 2023 as X, have already been singled out for misinformation that contributed to recent far-right violence in the UK. In a video posted on X, influencer Andrew Tate falsely claimed that the suspect in the Southport stabbing that killed three girls and injured eight other children was an “undocumented migrant” who had “arrived on a boat”.
“Civil war is inevitable,” Elon Musk added on X, a comment denounced by a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
In the United States, illegal immigration is also one of Elon Musk’s obsessions. He has adopted the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden abolished borders to secure new voters for the Democratic Party.
“Biden’s strategy is very simple: 1. Bring as many illegals into the country as possible; 2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority – a one-party state,” he wrote last February to his followers, who now number more than 193 million.
Elon Musk is also fond of conspiracy theories about the electoral process. When he is not relaying false information himself, his social network refuses to correct false or misleading allegations on the subject.
For example, in May 2023, an analysis by media monitoring firm Zignal Labs for The Associated Press highlighted the 10 most widely shared tweets about a “rigged election” in the five days following a town hall meeting by Donald Trump that aired on CNN.
But while Musk’s platform has a system that allows users to add context to misleading posts, the 10 posts, which collectively garnered more than 43,000 retweets, were not accompanied by any such note.
A more recent study by the Center Against Online Hate identified 50 posts about the US election shared by Elon Musk on X that disinformation specialists identified as misleading or false.
Publications that have generated more than 1.2 billion views, according to the NGO.
Musk’s influence is also being felt in key states. Last week, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson opened an investigation into the actions of a political action committee called America PAC that is funded by the billionaire entrepreneur.
According to CNBC, America PAC created a site ostensibly for registering new voters. However, if the user is in a key state like Michigan or Georgia, they are not directed to their state’s site where they can register. Instead, they are asked to provide several pieces of personal data that could later be used to microtarget them with election ads.
“Every citizen should know exactly how their personal information is being used by political action committees, especially if an entity claims to help people register to vote in Michigan or any other state,” a spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State said.
During the same week, five secretaries of state, including Michigan, also asked Elon Musk to fix Grok, X’s chatbot.
THE chatbot de X is accused of spreading false information about state ballot deadlines shortly after Joe Biden withdrew from the race for the White House.
As with all the above-mentioned topics, X did not respond to this accusation.
“Examine” the election results
But Elon Musk recently exchanged a few emails with a journalist from the magazine The Atlantic on whether he will accept the results of the 2024 presidential election. Both of his sentences begin with “ifs.”
“If there are questions about the integrity of the election, they must be properly investigated and not dismissed out of hand or unreasonably questioned. If, after reviewing the election results, it turns out that Kamala won, that victory must be recognized and not challenged,” he wrote.
The boss of X abruptly stopped answering questions from his correspondent, who also wanted to ask him what he thought about the 2020 presidential election and what he meant by a “review of the election results.”
A few days later, while sharing on X a more than dubious video showing so-called “non-citizens” admitting to being registered on the Georgia voter rolls, he wrote: “Extremely disturbing!”