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

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.”

  • rizoid@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    954·
    9 months ago

    Even the people I know who aren’t all in on the fediverse are off of Twitter. Why are we still talking about it? The more news coverage the more it continues to exist. Stop covering Elon and let it die.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    312·
    9 months ago

    To be clear, this is literally the entire reason he bought twitter in the first place. He wanted to use it to influence the next presidential election.

  • DogPeePoo@lemm.eeEnglish
    145·
    9 months ago

    The best part of Elon

    ran down his mother’s leg.

    This South African immigrant doesn’t even vote in midterms.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    51·
    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    The freer flow of false voting information is hardly the only perceived threat to elections building on social platforms, with the rise of artificial intelligence, increasingly realistic deep fakes and a growing acceptance of political violence.

    While Rupert Murdoch’s conservative media empire, which includes Fox News, has exercised unrivaled influence over United States politics for decades, he has largely kept behind the scenes, generally leaving it to his editors, producers and hosts to determine the specifics of the coverage.

    Exhibiting a distinctly 21st-century form of raw media power, X has also throttled and punished Mr. Musk’s perceived competitors and foes while reinstating accounts that were previously banned for content violations, some relating to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

    As Mr. Trump and his allies ramped up their attacks on mail voting — a preferred method for Democrats during the coronavirus pandemic — Twitter expanded its policy to remove or label claims that “undermine faith” in elections.

    Agreeing with critics who say the measures caused unfair and one-sided censorship, Mr. Musk said he cut the integrity team last fall because it was in fact “undermining election integrity.” He added, “They’re gone.” (His chief executive, Ms. Yaccarino, quickly disputed that characterization, saying the work would continue and even expand.)

    This came as a surprise to me.” A couple of days earlier, Mr. Musk implied that Mr. Biden and the Democrats were being lax on immigration because “they are importing voters,” an echo of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump was sharing around the same time.

    The original article contains 1,562 words, the summary contains 258 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • 1984@lemmy.todayEnglish
      132·
      9 months ago

      I don’t get it. Why try to control what others enjoy reading? I just scroll past the stuff I don’t want to read.

      I could be standing in the middle of the road, trying to prevent people doing what I don’t like, but it won’t work. :)

      • simple@lemm.eeEnglish
        103·
        9 months ago

        I’m not controlling what people are posting or reading, I’m just voicing my opinion.

        These types of points are repetitive and have pointless discussions. “Elon Musk is bad stop using twitter” Yes, we know, we have this thread virtually every day now and get the same exact comments with the same exact responses. I’m tired of seeing them constantly on my feed is all.

        • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          A couple of excerpts:

          wrote in a blog post that the platform had expanded its alternate approach to fact-checking misinformation — through crowdsourced “community notes” written by users.

          There were no such notes on Mr. Musk’s voting messages. But they were on a post by another X user that made the wild claim that Mr. Biden won the New Hampshire primary only through ballot stuffing.

          And

          On Jan. 10, he responded to a post about the recent influx of undocumented immigrants by writing, falsely, that “illegals are not prevented from voting in federal elections. This came as a surprise to me.” A couple of days earlier, Mr. Musk implied that Mr. Biden and the Democrats were being lax on immigration because “they are importing voters,” an echo of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump was sharing around the same time.

          These are new, from this month, and it is news. If this type of thing doesn’t get repeated more than lies, then what becomes of the truth?

          This news isn’t about Elon Musk, it’s about the state of our democracy and the platforms used to control it. If you don’t like hearing about that, you may want to unsubscribe from the news community.