A survey about the US election found that 74% were misleading posts
The Community Notes program, which is used to verify information, of Elon Musk’s X social network, does not combat false information related to the US election, the Center to Combat Digital Hate (CCDH) said in a report yesterday.
Of the 283 misleading posts on X that the CCDH analyzed, 209, or 74 percent of the posts, did not display accurate notes to all X users correcting false and misleading claims about the election, the report said. “The 209 misleading posts in our sample that did not show Community Notes available to all users garnered 2.2 billion views,” CCDH notes.
Elon Musk, who in July officially supported the Republican candidate for the US presidency, Donald Trump, has been participating in the election campaign in recent days, having also spread false news about the November 5 election, such as the debunked claims about illegal immigrants, who were allowed to vote.
Social media platforms, including X, have been under scrutiny for years for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories, such as fake news about elections and vaccines. X did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
X launched the Community Notes section last year. It’s an app that allows users to comment on posts to flag false or misleading content, effectively putting the verification of information in the hands of users instead of a paid verification team. Several governments have raised concerns about content on the X platform, including Australia, the United Kingdom and Brazil. In fact, Brazil banned X for a time earlier this year.
Polls show that Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris are fighting head-to-head ahead of the election. Musk has become one of Trump’s staunchest supporters and one of his biggest donors. Earlier in the year, X lost an appeal by the Center to Combat Digital Hate that accused her of allowing hate speech to grow on the platform.
Local authorities in five US states called on billionaire Musk in August to fix X’s AI chatbot (a software application designed to mimic human conversation through text or voice interactions) on the grounds that it was misleading about the November 5 elections.
