Elon Musk under fire: Spreading false info and election theories

On October 22, 2024, Musk shared an image, supposedly a screenshot from "The Atlantic" magazine, with the headline "Trump is Literally Hitler." The magazine refuted this, stating that “The fake headline distorts an Atlantic article that was published on October 22, 2024, with the headline "Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had.'"

This is just one example of Musk spreading false information, especially as he has officially supported the Republicans in the upcoming presidential elections. The topic of elections dominates his social media activity.

Musk has repeatedly suggested that illegal immigrants will influence the election results, even though they do not have the right to vote. He claimed that Democrats are relocating immigrants to states where votes could be decisive, and that they are speeding up citizenship procedures. This information has been debunked—Democrats are not relocating immigrants, and the naturalization procedures have not been expedited.

Musk also spreads conspiracy theories about voting machines, referencing Trump's 2020 allegations.

There’s always this question of, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that, I think, they were used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County [in Arizona] but not in a lot of other places. Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence? – Musk wrote.

Dominion, the company that won a lawsuit against Fox News for $787 million, clarified that their machines are secure, and ballots are verified manually. - Hand counts and audits of such paper ballots have repeatedly proven that Dominion machines produce accurate results. These are not matters of opinion. They are verifiable facts, a Dominion representative stated.

Journalists from CBS News examined Musk's posts and determined that 55% of them contain false or misleading information. In an article published on October 21, 2024, CBS News emphasized that 40 accounts Musk interacted with were spreading voter fraud theories.

Similar research was conducted by "The New York Times," which stated that “Almost a third of 171 posts over a five-day period made by the X owner were false, misleading or missing vital context."

Elon Musk is also the subject of false information. The Disinformation Chronicle portal reported that Harris’s campaign adviser, Morgan McSweeney, plans to “kill Musk’s Twitter.” This information was supposedly from action plans of the UK Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

A false story has circulated for many years that Musk was an illegal immigrant in the USA. PolitiFact verified that Musk legally received Canadian citizenship and later an American student and work visa.

In October 2024, a rumor surfaced that Musk promised Trump $5 billion for his campaign, which was not true. This information originated from a satirical site, whose contents were mistakenly treated as genuine.

Similarly, there were claims that Musk aimed to acquire ABC television to fire the presidential debate moderators. This was also false.

Elon Musk, with 202 million followers, is the first user of the platform X to achieve such a milestone. Musk's posts between September 30 and October 14 garnered over 600 million views and received over 5.3 million likes.