News @lemmy.world breakfastmtn @lemmy.ca 4 mo. ago

Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation, but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long Gone

www.nytimes.com Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation, but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long Gone

Civil rights lawyers and Democrats are sounding alarms about Mr. Musk’s claims about voting. The Biden campaign called his posts “profoundly irresponsible.”

In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims.

“Get the facts about mail-in voting,” a content label read. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” the hyperlinked article declared.

This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.

This time, there were no fact checks. And the X algorithm — under Mr. Musk’s direct control — helped the posts reach large audiences, in some cases drawing many millions of views.

Since taking control of the site, Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing it amounted to election interference.

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4 mo. ago

Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation, but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long Gone

www.nytimes.com /2024/01/25/us/politics/elon-musk-election-misinformation-x-twitter.html

102 comments

Good luck in November, America. Seems you'll need it more than ever.
This was the plan the whole time. Duh
So cut his fucking security clearance already for fucks sake what the fuck even is this pussy shit.

If drug use and election disinformation aren't enough to kill his contracts, then the stupid fucking Democrats have no fucking balls.
Next week- Elon blames Trump's loss on voter fraud instigated by Jews working with Black people.
It’s true, I saw some tweets calling musk a genius.
It feels like why he wanted the site lol. The site is just a few steps above posting on truth social at this point.
When I become a billionaire I hope you guys don’t let me become just a trash human like basically every billionaire.
Yes, that was his goal.
“Oh, boo hoo,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, a lawyer whose firm represents Mr. Trump

I mean, they are basically just good old fashioned trolls - sadists, sociopaths and narcissists and morons. And they are winning.

We shouldn't have been so mean to Elon. I blame reddit for this /s
As long as Trump gets elected, it's money well spent I assume.
Now that's the real reason for dropping 44 billion on a zero profit only-costs platform. It already got Milei elected on Argentina, US and Mexico are next
the mods on Lemmy don't care about election misinformation either. I have had a thousand people tell me that voting for cornel west counts as a vote for trump, and I have never seen it removed.

hell, I was told this by a moderator for c/politics.
Everyone needs to take more responsibility for the nonsense they read instead of blaming it all on the platform or Elon.
There's still the open version of fact checking: community notes

What are the facts about this? That it doesn't happen...that often?

There's no real time enforcement for it to mean anything. The votes are tallied in real time, and a winner is announced, then months to years later people (who are caught) are prosecuted?

Can someone point out why mail in voting with no ID is a good thing? I'm genuinely curious

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