In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump tweeted messages warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, disproving his claims.
“Get the details on voting by mail,” read one content tag. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” the hyperlinked article states.
This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and renamed it X, repeated several of Mr Trump’s claims about the US voting system, promoting distorted and false perceptions that US elections were open to fraud and illegality. non-citizen voting.
This time, there were no background checks. And Algorithm X — under Mr. Musk’s direct control — helped the posts reach large audiences, in some cases attracting several million views.
Since taking control of the site, Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing that it amounted to election interference.
Now, his early-election attacks on a tried-and-true voting method are raising alarm among civil rights lawyers, election officials and Democrats. They worry that his control over the major social media platform gives him an enormous ability to rekindle the doubts about the American electoral system that were so widespread before the uprising on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.
As Mr Trump’s victory in New Hampshire moved the race closer to the general election floor, the Biden campaign for the first time directly criticized Mr Musk for his handling of election content on X: “It is deeply irresponsible to spread false information and to sow distrust in how our elections work,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said this week in a statement to The New York Times.
“It’s even more dangerous coming from the owner of a social media platform,” he added.
What angered the Biden campaign pleased pro-Trump Republicans and others who portray the old Twitter as part of a government-controlled censorship regime that helped Mr. Biden in 2020. Under a system now being challenged in the Supreme Court, government officials alerted platforms to posts they deemed dangerous, though it was up to the companies to act or not.
“Oh boo hoo,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, a lawyer whose firm represents Mr. Trump, said of the Democratic allegations. Ms. Dhillon sued the company for suspending the account of a customer who declined an election after being notified by California election officials — the kind of government interaction that Mr. Musk has repudiated. He noted that the platform is now “a much better place for conservatives” and said of Mr. Musk, “he’s great.”
X did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier this week, its CEO, Linda Yacarinowrote in a blog post that the platform had expanded its alternative approach to data-checking disinformation — via crowdsourced “community notes” written by users.
There were no such notes in Mr. Musk’s campaign messages. But it was in a post by another X user that he made the crazy claim that Mr. Biden won the New Hampshire primary through ballot stuffing alone.
The freer flow of false voting information is not the only perceived threat to elections based on social platforms, with the rise of artificial intelligence, increasingly realistic deep fakes and the growing acceptance of political violence.
That Mr. Biden’s campaign would single out Mr. Musk shows the unique role he already plays in the 2024 election.
No major media owner in modern times has used his national platform to so personally and aggressively enter an American election.
While Rupert Murdoch’s conservative media empire, which includes Fox News, has wielded unparalleled influence over United States politics for decades, it has remained largely behind the scenes, generally leaving it to its publishers, producers and hosts to determine the specifics of coverage.
And while Facebook is bigger than X, its owner, Mark Zuckerberg, is accountable to shareholders and responsive to advertisers. He tried to avoid getting personally drawn into the political controversy.
Mr. Musk came within days of taking ownership of the site, urging his followers to vote Republican. He was open in his disdain for Mr. Biden, whose White House has at times responded in kind.
Again, Mr. Musk has no concerns for shareholders in X, which he took private in late 2022. He has dismissed complaints from advertisers or calls to block content that might undermine trust in democracy.
Demonstrating a clear form of raw 21st-century media power, X has also suppressed and punished perceived rivals and enemies of Mr. Musk, while reinstating accounts previously banned for content violations, some related to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The platform’s algorithm – which dictates how posts are circulated on the site – also offers additional promotion to those who pay to be “verified”, including previously banned accounts.
Among them is @KanekoaTheGreat, a once-banned QAnon influencer who this month released a 32-page dossier promoted by Mr Trump that chronicled a barrage of false accusations about the 2020 election.
It earned nearly 22 million views.
In 2020, Twitter’s “election integrity hub,” which had an open line with outside groups and political campaigns, either deleted or added content to posts with misleading information about the vote.
Posts with false information about when and where to vote, for example, would be removed. Those with misleading information about mail-in voting, such as Mr. Trump’s, will receive alerts directing users to fact-checking alerts and articles.
As Mr Trump and his allies stepped up their attacks on mail-in voting – a preferred method for Democrats during the coronavirus pandemic – Twitter developed its policy to remove or label allegations that “undermine credibility” in elections;
These measures proved so effective. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the other major platforms, which had similar measures, were also inundated with election hoaxes and faced criticism in the months after the Jan. 6 attack for not doing enough.
Agreeing with critics who say the measures created unfair and one-sided censorship, Mr. Musk said he cut the integrity team last fall because it was actually “undermining electoral integrity.” He added: “They left.” (Its CEO, Ms. Yaccarino, quickly disputed that characterization, saying the project would continue and even expand.)
Maya Wiley, the executive director of the Human Rights Leadership Conference, who regularly communicated with the platforms in 2020, said Mr. Musk’s decision had ripple effects. “It’s also given a free pass to the likes of Facebook and YouTube,” he said.
X is more lenient policy still targets posts that incite violence, include verifiably false information about voting locations and dates, or are misleading about eligibility laws, “including ID or citizenship requirements.”
Mr. Musk’s recent posts seem to contradict that rule.
On January 10, he responded to a post about the recent influx of undocumented immigrants by writing, falsely, that “illegals are not prevented from voting in federal elections. That was a surprise to me.” A few days earlier, Mr. Musk suggested that Mr. Biden and the Democrats were lax on immigration because they were “bringing in voters,” echoing the “great replacement” conspiracy theory shared by Mr. Trump at the same time. .
United States law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections, under threat of imprisonment and deportation. Cases of illegal voting by non-citizens are rare.
Mr Musk has also raised wider doubts about the US electoral system. On Jan. 8, he wrote that voters in the United States “don’t need a government ID to vote and you can mail in your ballot. This is crazy.” The post was viewed 59 million times.
More than half of the states require voters to present some form of identification at the polls, and most do not require signatures, affidavits or dates of birth. Federal law requires identity verification from voters when they register.
In November, he followed up on a story about significant evidence of widespread voter fraud in Bridgeport, Conn., and wrote, “The only question is how common it is.”
Where Bridgeport’s problem is real — enough that a judge ordered a rerun of the Democratic primary — it’s also rare. Mail-in ballots have been used for years, and with various safeguards, have proven highly reliable, with bipartisan acceptance, at least before Mr. Trump stepped up criticism of the method.
Mr. Trump has failed to provide evidence of any significant fraud in any of his lawsuits challenging his 2020 defeat.
That didn’t stop Mr. Musk from adding to the ongoing rumblings of skepticism about the electoral system among millions of Americans, adding to an already tumultuous climate for election officials as Mr. Trump repeats his stolen campaign lies about 2024, some election officials said. .
“It bubbles and keeps the temperature higher,” said Stephen Richer, the county recorder in Maricopa County, Ariz., a hotbed for election conspiracy theories. A Republican and longtime admirer of Mr. Musk’s business achievements, Mr. Richter added: “Whether President Trump or Mr. Musk are talking about this and keeping it very important, that can potentially make our lives more challenging. .”
The Biden campaign shares that concern. “We will continue to call out this recklessness as we honor President Biden’s commitment to protect our elections,” said Ms. Chavez-Rodriguez.
This is, however, the only option the campaign has — the complaint line between the campaign and the platform is dead.