How Elon Musk and X have become an incubator for election misinformation in Pennsylvania

Philadelphia-area election officials gathered earlier this year for a conference on cybersecurity and election threats related to artificial intelligence ahead of a Nov. 5 election in which Pennsylvania is poised to play a pivotal role.

Representatives from major social media companies presented on what they could do to remove content that was, as Delaware County Election Director Jim Allen described it, “pants-on-fire lies.”

The response from X, formerly known as Twitter, stood out to Allen.

“Twitter goes out there and says, in keeping with our CEO, we believe in limiting reach, not speech,” Allen said. He was appalled, taking the lesson that one of the nation’s biggest social media companies would refuse to remove verifiably false information — instead suggesting it would just limit the spread of that information after it is already out there.

“Twitter’s representative basically said, ‘Well, you can shout in one crowded theater,’” Allen said, referring to First Amendment case law that holds that the freedom of speech does not allow you to shout “fire!” in a crowded theater. “It’s a total abrogation of responsibility in terms of spreading misinformation.”

X has been fertile ground for misinformation for the last several election cycles, but a key difference this year is that the company’s owner is now an active participant in its spread.

Last week, when X owner Elon Musk opted to share a post alleging 5,200 people had registered to vote at the address of a Philadelphia social services organization, it spread like wildfire.

Musk’s post, which remarked “this is crazy” as he shared misinformation shared by another account, was viewed 16.3 million times; 58,000 people shared it to their own profiles.

By comparison, a post shared by Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein fact-checking the claim was shared 40 times, with 16,000 views.

Since Musk bought the platform in 2022, he has rolled back the content moderation strategies taken by previous leadership, allowing false claims to go virtually unchecked. And he has helped spread false information himself to his more than 202 million followers. He is X’s most followed user, even surpassing former President Donald Trump, who has 92 million followers.

In a year when election officials are already extremely worried about dangerous misinformation sowing doubt in the integrity of the election and creating an environment where political violence could occur, Musk and X have added fuel to the fire.

“The platform is designed to uplift his content, but he’s done essentially what Trump has done in terms of taking ideas that have been on the fringe, taking content that is on the fringe, and sending it to tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people,” said Neil Makhija, chair of the Montgomery County Election Board.

The Inquirer was unable to reach X for comment and Musk’s political action committee did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

Within the last month, Musk, the richest man in the world, has ramped up his efforts to help deliver crucial Pennsylvania for Trump on Nov. 5, mostly through his pro-Trump America PAC, which has sponsored Musk’s Pennsylvania town halls and a legally questionable $1 million lottery for swing-state voters.

But it’s likely nothing has as much reach as Musk’s personal X account, which has become a distributor for election misinformation at the behest of right-wing talking points.

“That whole platform is a cesspool of misinformation,” Allen said of X.

Since Oct. 1, Musk — who once said “the overarching goal for the X platform is to be the best source of truth in the world” — has repeatedly spread the false claim that Democrats are transporting undocumented immigrants into swing states, including Pennsylvania, to turn them blue. He has reposted disinformation about voting machines in the commonwealth, and has allowed a fake video, manufactured by Russia, of a Bucks County election worker tearing up ballots to continue circulating on the platform days after it was debunked.

Certain features on X have also given way to brewing misinformation. X’s artificial intelligence-powered assistant, Grok, has been spreading voter fraud conspiracy theories, and America PAC created an “Election Integrity Community,” which has become an echo chamber for false election information and conspiracy theories driven by X users, not professional election administrators.

The Election Integrity Community provides a venue for “simple, harmless things,” like minor technical issues, to be magnified and vilified on a larger scale, said Sunil Wattal, an associate dean and professor at Temple University and an expert on digital transformation and fake news.

“It’s kind of self-fulfilling prophecy where one side of the aisle goes to these sites and feeds off this misinformation which is really unverified and kind of, you know, really, not really credible, like a picture or a story or something which could be … a simple mistake, or something totally harmless,” Wattal said.

Election officials are spending time debunking misinformation shared on the site — whether it’s done online or through residents who parrot what they hear in public meetings or in lawsuits.

In Montgomery County, Makhija said, he has started holding virtual town halls to answer questions about elections and sharing information on the county’s public platforms. Makhija contributed a video to the New York Times’ opinion page seeking to debunk myths about election fraud.

The day after Musk’s tweet about voters experiencing homelessness, Philadelphia Commissioner Omar Sabir held a news conference to remind homeless residents that they were allowed, and encouraged, to vote in the election.

Bluestein has persistently responded to viral misinformation on the platform in an attempt to correct the record.

“Whether somebody has 200 million followers or two followers, it is incumbent upon all of us to get the facts right and only share accurate information,” Bluestein said at an unrelated news conference. “Mis- and disinformation that spreads around can result in real harassment, real threats, and real violence.”

On Twitter in 2020, misinformation existed on the platform, but more guardrails were in place. Users could face bans, suspensions, or warnings for content that violated terms of service, said Deen Freelon, presidential professor and digital politics expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trump was banned from the platform in the final days of his presidency after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which followed months of conspiracy mongering by the former president. He was reinstated by Musk in November 2022.

But the platform’s guardrails have been stripped back “under the guise of free speech,” Freelon said. Many accounts that had been banned for misinformation or hate speech have been reinstated under Musk, and the billionaire has also significantly decreased publicly available data for researchers to determine how much misinformation has been spread.

“Having a person like that at the helm of social media, of a social network, and he is, especially in this election, when he is so openly biased towards one candidate, that creates an opportunity for the whole platform to be biased in that one direction,” Wattal said. “Which is not good for the elections, or the society, or, you know, the country.”