Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation, but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long Gone ( www.nytimes.com )

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

In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims.

“Get the facts about mail-in voting,” a content label read. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” the hyperlinked article declared.

This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.

This time, there were no fact checks. And the X algorithm — under Mr. Musk’s direct control — helped the posts reach large audiences, in some cases drawing many millions of views.

Since taking control of the site, Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing it amounted to election interference.

Non-paywall link

Jaysyn ,
@Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

Twitter is for fascists.

Zoboomafoo ,
@Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net avatar

https://apnews.com/article/ballot-harvesting-early-voting-election-2024-republicans-a844f375bb86b012cfba0e67b3f77fb7

Just in time for the Republicans to realize that their actions have consequences and they need their voters to vote early

You love to see it

Jaysyn , (edited )
@Jaysyn@kbin.social avatar

I bet the will start doing the exact illegal things that they claimed the Democrats have been doing, will get caught & will attempt to use their own false claims against the Democrats as "evidence" that "both sides" are equally corrupt.

BadActorLol ,

What's x? Xbox?

fluxion ,

x is 💩

homesweethomeMrL ,

Beats me. But everytime there's a post about it it has that bizarre old stoned guy on it. Florida Man (?)

cupcakezealot ,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

if apple and google would grow a spine and kick twitter out of the app store, this would be moot.

homesweethomeMrL ,

But . . the money! Won't someone think of the money?!?!

dharwin ,

Elon is the dumbass who thinks he's smarter than everyone else. We all know someone like him.

grue ,

How much longer does this shit have to go on before mainstream people finally realize that Xitter (pronounced "shitter") is just the next iteration of Parler/Gab/Truth[sic] Social and abandon the platform for the propaganda garbage heap it is?

Telorand , (edited )

This. I get that "all my friends and content creators are there," but if enough people left, so would their friends and creators.

It's like nobody learned a thing from Facebook, and say, "Well, guess I have to sit in shit, because I've tried doing nothing, and I'm all outta ideas."

Edit: typo

youngGoku ,

Addiction is a helluva disease

homesweethomeMrL ,

Yeah. Corporate News Medai: Attention! If you link or quote Xitter your article and possibly your outlet will be cast into the void. Heed this admonition.

7u5k3n ,

And there's the reason he bought it...

Zellith ,

He wanted to buy it on the cheap, but screwed up so monumentally in the way he went about it that I dont know whether to laugh or cry.

homesweethomeMrL ,

Oh, I do.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

How mail-in voting works for those who don't know and need to explain it to idiots who believe people like Musk.

  1. You register to vote with a specific name and address. You have to prove you are who you say you are (meaning that you are a citizen) when you register to vote.
  2. Before election day, the state sends a ballot specifically addressed to you in your name at the address you provided.
  3. You fill out the ballot, sign it with a signature that can be matched to the one on your voting registration form, and send it back.

Where can fraud enter into that process? How is this going to lead to non-citizens voting?

Shiggles ,

The “fraud” is greater voter accessibility, which is always damaging to the hateful minority.

CosmicTurtle ,

Multiple studies have shown that mail-in ballots have a very very low incidence of fraud and does not favor any particular party. That said, I'm going to put on my black hat for a moment.

  1. Voter registration doesn't always involve a signature. It can be done online in many jurisdictions. So point 3 doesn't always work.
  2. Voter registration doesn't always confirm your address, because homeless people are permitted to vote.
  3. Mail Forwarding can be set up by a third party, without your consent. Ballots can be then be forwarded to someone wanting to vote on your behalf.
  4. When setting up absentee voting, you can specify an address unaffiliated with your actual address.
  5. Mail-in ballots can be intercepted before voting takes places or before they are picked up by a postal worker. Ballots can be intercepted at the post office prior to final delivery.
  6. Coerced voting can occur if someone is able to influence someone else's vote.

With the exception of point 5, at the end of the day, you're changing one vote with the penalty being a felony and prison time. And it's absolutely a lot of work. So if I were trying to change the results of the election, the best place to do it would be as a postal employee that delivers to the registrar.

Again, the rate in which voter fraud happens is so low, this should be a non-issue. Does it happen? Yes. And the last few election cycles, it's been performed by people in the party screaming voter fraud, who have been caught.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Oregon has all vote by mail.

How will the system ensure only U.S. citizens are registered to vote?︿

​ The Elections Division will only send OMV Cards to people who have provided documentation that they are U.S. citizens

https://sos.oregon.gov/voting/Pages/motor-voter-faq.aspx

Furthermore, when can the ballots be intercepted? By going to every mailbox in a neighborhood and stealing the ballots before the postal worker picks them up? Do you really think that's feasible?

Also, coerced voting can occur no matter what the voting method.

CosmicTurtle ,

Given the determined nature of the MAGA party, I honestly wouldn't put it past them.

I'm not saying it's easy or even likely. I'm just saying it's possible. None of what I said should discourage anyone from voting by mail.

Remember that the long term goal of the alt right is to make seem voting illegitimate so that they can just install whomever they want.

Discrediting mail-in voting is just one part of their campaign.

localme ,

Mail forwarding doesn’t apply to all mail btw. For example, mail from the dmv.

After moving to a new place, I was expecting something from the dmv (had sent in the request months earlier before I knew I was moving). I had the mail forward in place, so figured I was good. I never received it, so eventually I called the dmv and they told me their mail is not redirected with a mail forward, and would just be returned to them.

I am curious if the same would apply to official election mail.

n3m37h ,

Ah Elons free speech working as intended /s

frunch ,

Well it cost him $44 billion but everybody can hear him loud and clear

xc2215x ,

Elon doesn't want any fact checkers.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Or any facts.

autotldr Bot ,

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!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • politics@lemmy.world
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •