When it comes to targeting and correcting misinformation on social media, X users are totally on their own—even, or maybe especially, when that misinformation is coming from Elon Musk, the company owner.
On Monday, Musk shared an A.I.-generated image of Vice President Kamala Harris dressed in a red uniform with a hammer and sickle insignia, the symbol of the Soviet Union.
“Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” Musk captioned the image that he distributed to his 196 million followers.
Musk was responding directly to a post made by Harris’s official account that misquoted Donald Trump from a December town hall, in which Trump said he wouldn’t be a dictator “except for Day One.” And yet, regardless of Musk’s political messaging, his decision to broadcast a realistic, fabricated image of the Democratic presidential nominee to millions of Americans is troubling—especially considering that the site’s content safety net, Community Notes, was conveniently not working for the misleading post.
Comments underneath Musk’s post attempted to serve their own community note, given the failure of the site’s moderation services.
“COMMUNITY NOTE: This is an AI generated photo and misinformation,” wrote one user who received 23,000 likes on their comment.
Others were highly critical of how Musk was leveraging his massive platform.
“You don’t think this type of extreme manipulation at best, flat out lie at worst isn’t dangerous coming from the richest person on earth that happens to own one of the largest platforms? Doesn’t all the money and power come with more responsibility?” wrote former Florida Senate candidate Mike Harvey.
“Are you testing community notes?” asked political commentator Ed Krassenstein.
The billionaire purchased the social media behemoth for $44 billion, with the help of massive bank loans. Under his control, Musk has introduced radical changes to the site, including laying off 75 percent of its employees, crippling its verification system, and changing the algorithm to promote more advertisements, irrelevant content, and antisemitism. Over the weekend, major stakeholders in X began to share their discontent with Musk’s leadership, arguing that the 53-year-old and his spontaneous decisions had created a “tremendous amount of wealth destruction” for the site’s investors.
