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.
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