Musk's X ineffective against surge in US election misinformation, report says

The crowd-sourced fact-checking feature of Elon Musk's X, Community Notes, is not countering false claims about the US election, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) said in a report today.

Of the 283 misleading X posts that CCDH analysed, 209, or 74 percent of the posts, did not show accurate notes to all X users correcting false and misleading claims about the elections, the report said.

"The 209 misleading posts in our sample that did not display available Community Notes to all users have amassed 2.2 billion views," CCDH said.

"Community Notes maintains a high bar to make notes effective and maintain trust across perspectives, and thousands of election and politics related notes have cleared that bar in 2024," Keith Coleman, who oversees Community Notes and is vice president of product at X, told Reuters.

Musk, who endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in July, has been on the campaign trail in recent days, where he has spread false claims about the 5 November US election, including debunked allegations involving undocumented migrants being allowed to vote.

Social media platforms, including X, have been under scrutiny for years over the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, including false information about elections and vaccines.

X launched its "Community Notes" feature last year, which allows users to comment on posts to flag false or misleading content, crowd-sourcing fact-checking to users rather than a dedicated team of fact checkers.

Several governments have raised concerns over content on X's platform, including Australia, the United Kingdom and Brazil. The latter country had banned X for a period earlier this year.

Polls show Trump is in a tight race with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Musk has become one of Trump's most vocal and largest financial supporters.

X lost a lawsuit brought by CCDH earlier this year that faulted it for allowing a rise in hate speech on the social media platform.

Secretaries of state from five U.S. states urged billionaire Musk in August to fix X's AI chatbot, saying it had spread misinformation related to the election.

- Reuters