A recent report from the British non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) revealed that Elon Musk, owner of X, posted 50 instances of misinformation regarding the US election and the Democrats’ presidential campaign this year. Despite the false claims made by Musk on the platform, they remain unchecked, even by X’s own fact-checking feature. Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, expressed concern about the lack of accountability for Musk’s posts, citing the potential for such content to incite real-world violence. Musk’s posts, made between January 1 and July 31, included baseless allegations about voter fraud and conspiracy theories surrounding the Democratic party. Despite being proven false by fact-checkers, these posts have not been corrected. One particularly alarming post featured an AI-generated deepfake of Kamala Harris, further violating X’s policies. The report estimates that Musk’s tweets have been viewed around 1.2 billion times on X. In light of these findings, Ahmed called for social media companies to be held accountable under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Currently, CCDH is embroiled in a legal battle with Musk and X Corp, who filed a lawsuit against the non-profit group. Efforts to reach X for comment have been challenging as the site has dissolved its public relations team under Musk’s leadership.
