How Elon Musk is disrupting US elections to boost Trump

While he stokes far-right hysteria overseas, Elon Musk is amplifying election disinformation at home.

The 2024 presidential cycle is the first since Musk bought X, formerly Twitter. Under his ownership, the fact checkers are gone, AI-generated content is feeding false election information to millions of users, and Musk himself is responsible for misleading posts that have been viewed more than 1 billion times.

The world’s wealthiest man not only controls a platform where he can boost Donald Trump’s campaign, he also helped launch a Trump-supporting political action committee to spend and raise unlimited dollars to get him elected — a uniquely powerful combination that election analysts, civil rights groups and state prosecutors are closely watching.

“Elon Musk is abusing his privileged position as owner of a small, but politically influential, social media platform to sow disinformation that generates discord and distrust,” according to Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which found that none of Musk’s posts about US elections have been fact-checked.

The platform is “failing woefully to contain the kind of algorithmically-boosted incitement that we all know can lead to real-world violence, as we experienced on January 6, 2021,” Ahmed said.

The Independent’s requests for comment to X received an auto reply: “Busy now, please check back later.”

An image of an iPhone text message appears on the screen: “Hey, you need to vote.”

The next message includes a picture of a bloodied Donald Trump raising his fist above the headline “Trump Rally Assassination Attempt” followed by a video clip of Trump onstage as shots are fired towards him.

“This is out of control,” replies a man lying in bed as the messages