By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – False or misleading claims by billionaire Elon Musk about the U.S. election have amassed 2 billion views on social media platform X this year, according to a report by non-profit group Center for Countering Digital Hate.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Government officials and voting rights advocates in the U.S. have warned about election-related misinformation while urging social media platforms, including X, to take steps to remove any false information about the vote.
Musk, who owns X, is a supporter for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump who faces Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris in what polls show to be a tight race for the White House. Musk endorsed Trump in July.
BY THE NUMBERS
At least 87 of Musk’s posts this year have promoted claims about the U.S. election that fact-checkers have rated as false or misleading, amassing 2 billion views, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Musk’s political posts have amassed 17.1 billion views since he endorsed Donald Trump in July – over twice as many views as all the U.S. political campaigning ads that X has recorded in its political ads disclosure dataset in the same period, the non-profit group added.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CONTEXT
Among posts by Musk that were described in the report as false or misleading were those claiming “voter importation” such as “a triple digit” rise over the past four years in undocumented immigrants in battleground states, as well as posts questioning “the integrity of voting.”
Last week, the same non-profit said the crowd-sourced fact-checking feature of Musk’s X, Community Notes, was not countering false claims about the U.S. election.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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