Elon Musk, billionaire and owner of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), plays an important role in Donald Trump’s online campaign strategy. Musk’s publications and statements on According to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, these flagged posts attracted more than 2 billion views.

Since Musk acquired X, he has scaled back content moderation, leading to the firing of many employees responsible for filtering misinformation. As a result, Kathleen Carley, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon, pointed out that X now acts as a “hub” for misinformation, which then spreads to other platforms like Reddit and Telegram. As of 2023, fact-checkers have identified 87 of Musk’s posts as false, but these posts have collectively reached around 2 billion views.

The spread of false information about X has a notable impact in states crucial to the outcome of elections. In Pennsylvania, a swing state, local election officials are grappling with waves of false claims circulating on the platform. For example, minor voter registration issues have been misrepresented as voter suppression. Common Cause’s Philip Hensley-Robin explained that these reported registrations were routine checks to verify voter eligibility, but that online misrepresentations led to public confusion and distrust.

One particularly viral misinformation was a fake video purportedly showing the destruction of Trump’s mail-in ballots. This video was widely shared on X by an account with 117,000 followers, sparking concerns about the rapid spread of misinformation. Cyabra, an AI company focused on identifying and combatting online lies, cited this case as an example of how easily manipulated content can go viral, misleading large numbers of people before verification .