False or misleading claims about the U.S. election posted this year to X by Elon Musk have generated nearly 1.2 billion views on the social media platform, according to an analysis published Thursday by the nonprofit organization Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Researchers from the center said they identified 50 instances this year when Musk posted election claims that have been debunked by independent fact-checkers but spread widely on the app anyway.
None of the 50 posts by Musk displayed a “Community Note” to correct his claims or add context, calling into question the effectiveness of X’s user-driven fact-checking system, the center said.
Musk is a supporter of former President Donald Trump, and the report is one of the first efforts to measure the scope of Musk’s influence on the 2024 election through his presence on X. This is the first presidential contest since Musk bought the app, formerly known as Twitter, and Musk has the biggest audience on X with 193 million followers.
“What Musk is doing is creating a sort of colosseum-style spectacle of encouraging, amplifying and himself spreading disinformation,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, in a phone interview.
X and Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday ahead of the report’s publication.
X is facing other scrutiny related to the election. On Monday, five secretaries of state said X had shared false election information including about ballot deadlines, and a New York congressman has asked for an investigation into whether X improperly prevented users from following an official account for Vice President Kamala Harris. X has not addressed either of those allegations.
Musk in recent months has escalated his rhetoric on social issues such as immigration and transgender rights, coinciding with his warming relationship with Trump. He recently weighed in on British politics, too, predicting a “civil war” in the U.K. as anti-immigrant riots raged.
Musk is one of the world’s wealthiest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and a victory by Trump in the Nov. 5 election could be a boon for Musk’s business empire because of the wide array of regulatory fights it’s engaged in with the federal government.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate has published previous investigations into X, including about the spread of neo-Nazis and other extremists on the app. Last year, X sued the center, accusing it of cherry-picking information and interfering with X’s relationship with advertisers, but a federal judge dismissed the case and said X was using the lawsuit to try to silence its critics.
The center’s latest report says that Musk is finding a massive audience on his app for debunked claims about voting and U.S. elections.
One claim frequently pushed by Musk is the idea that Democrats are “importing voters.” Musk has alleged that it’s the “goal” of the Democratic Party to “import as many illegal voters as possible” and that Democrats “won’t deport, because every illegal is highly likely to vote at some point.” At least four such posts by Musk each received 40 million views or more, according to the center, which relied on X’s public tallies for how often a post has been viewed.
NBC News and other news organizations have fact-checked claims that non-citizens are registering to vote and found the claims to be false.
Under federal laws, only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. And a noncitizen must spend at least five years as a lawful permanent U.S. resident — or three years if they’re married to a U.S. citizen — to be eligible for naturalization as a citizen, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Last year, the median time spent as a lawful permanent resident prior to citizenship was seven years, according to the government.
Despite the fact checks, Musk has continued to push variations of the claim, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The center said that Musk posted about it on at least 42 occasions this year, receiving 747 million views.
A different viral post from Musk appeared to break X’s own rules against misleading videos. Last month, Musk received more than 134 million views on a parody video about Harris, without a disclaimer on the post making clear that the video used an altered voice.
The Harris campaign released a statement after that video spread saying that Musk and Trump were promoting “fake, manipulated lies.”
Ahmed, from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said he was alarmed to see that none of Musk’s posts with election misinformation had a fact-checking label from X’s Community Notes program. Under that system, certain users can propose adding a correction or context to a post, and if enough other X users vote in favor of the proposed note, the note becomes visible to everyone. The program launched in 2021, before Musk bought the app, and Musk has continued it.
“Elon Musk has told advertisers, the government and others that community notes are his solution to the disinformation problem on X, but it clearly isn’t working given that his lies remain unchallenged,” Ahmed said.
He said it was unclear why Musk’s claims aren’t being fact checked on the app he owns.
“We deserve more clarity as to what the rules are. Is it one rule for Elon and another rule for everyone else?” he asked.
