Elon Musk shares manipulated video of Kamala Harris in apparent violation of X’s policies

Elon Musk, the owner of X, reposted an altered video of Kamala Harris without noting that it had been edited, seemingly in violation of his own platform’s policies.

The world’s richest man reposted an video which seems to have been deceptively edited to make it appear as if a real campaign ad, where Harris says that she’s the “ultimate diversity hire,” President Joe Biden is senile and that she doesn’t “know the first thing about running the country.”

The video is a remaking of a Harris campaign ad, with images of former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance removed and images of Biden added, The New York Times noted. The original ad was released on Thursday.

The account that initially uploaded the edited video, @MrReaganUSA, states that it’s a “parody.” Musk makes no such mention, simply stating “This is amazing,” and adding a laughing emoji. Musk’s post had been viewed more than 120 million times as of Sunday afternoon.

The post appears to be violating X’s own policy against sharing “synthetic, manipulated or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”

The director of the Digital Democracy Project at the Demand Progress Education Fund, Alex Howard, responded to Musk, saying, “This is a violation of @X’s policies on synthetic media and misleading identities. Are you going to retroactively change them to allow violations in an election year?”

X’s policy was instituted in April last year, months after Musk bought the platform. It states that misleading media is content that’s “significantly and deceptively altered, manipulated or fabricated” and is “likely to result in widespread confusion on public issues.” The content has to be labeled or deleted.

Musk has previously