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This is yet another threat to Democracy, that needs to be added to the Voters Beware list:
Elon Musk has ramped up his efforts to tilt the Election — the facts be damned.
www.independent.co.uk — Sept 4, 2024
Elon Musk has posted an AI generated image of Kamala Harris as a communist dictator – and X users have responded by playing him at his own game.
Billionaire Musk was responding to a post Harris put out on 1 September where she shared a poster of Donald Trump reading: “Donald Trump vows to be a dictator on day one.”
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Then later, he shared an AI generated image of Harris in a red communist uniform and wrote sarcastically: “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”
But the Tesla CEO – the richest man on the planet – has faced a wave of backlash on his own social media platform, with several X users hitting back by creating their own AI images depicting Musk himself as a communist leader.
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That false AI image depicting Harris as some sort of “female Stalin” can be seen in the above story. If you want to see an example of Musk’s fat thumbs on the X-er scales — of truthiness.
More to the point, it was just reported tonight on All In with Chris Hayes, that Musk excludes himself from the weak-tea “moderation” system, he has installed on X (formerly known as Twitter). That “moderation” system is called Community Notes, which are fact-checks by users, that can get tagged to false posts. Musk has apparently excluded himself from such user-generated fact-checks.
Worse yet, the guest on Hayes’ show who has written a book about Musk and Twitter, states that Elon ordered the surviving X engineers to make sure all X-users see all of his posts. Whether or not they choose to follow him. And since he posts multiple times a day sometimes, X-users can be overwhelmed by his frenetic trail of BS.
These arrangements ensure him over a billion views — unfiltered from any fact-checks.
www.nbcnews.com — Aug 8, 2024
False or misleading claims about the U.S. election that Elon Musk has posted to X this year have generated nearly 1.2 billion views, according to an analysis published Thursday by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Researchers from the center said they identified 50 instances this year when Musk posted election claims that have been debunked by independent fact-checkers but spread widely on the app anyway.
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The center’s latest report says Musk is finding a massive audience on his app for debunked claims about voting and U.S. elections.
One claim frequently pushed by Musk is the idea that Democrats are “importing voters.” Musk has alleged that it’s the “goal” of the Democratic Party to “import as many illegal voters as possible” and that Democrats “won’t deport, because every illegal is highly likely to vote at some point.” At least four such posts by Musk got 40 million views or more, according to the center, which relied on X’s public tallies for how often a post has been viewed.
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That story re-iterates the absence of “Community Notes” on any of Musk’s posts.
Musk has apparently made it his mission/hobby to help get Trump elected — by influencing low-info voters with a deluge of hot-button lies — unchallenged.
Afterall he wants to get his $44B dollars worth from his Megaphone “investment” (AKA purchase of Twitter).
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Let’s not forget this not-so-little “fishing expedition” funded by Musk — under the guise of helping people “registering to vote,” a few weeks ago:
Last Friday, CNBC reported that a Musk-funded super PAC — America PAC — spent more than $800,000 on ads, many of which were apparently designed to collect voter data, sometimes on false premises. The ads encouraged people to visit America PAC’s website and implied that they could use this site to register to vote. According to published reports, while users who entered zip codes from noncompetitive states were directed to their state’s registration website, users indicating that they lived in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, or another swing state were instead directed to a form on America PAC’s site to enter more personal information, including their address, mobile phone number, and age. After submitting the form, a “thank you” page appeared that offered no assistance in actually registering to vote.
www.brennancenter.org — Aug 7, 2024
What he plans on doing with that scraped data — should not be discounted. Afterall, Trump managed to win in 2016, through such swing state “micro-targeting” — with a little help from Russia-funded misinformation campaigns (according the Mueller Report).
Where is the DOJ when we really need them? You’d think that crap like that (voter registration scams) would be illegal in this country. Apparently not — long as you can afford the fines.
Or better yet, you can pay for indefinite/continuous court delays.
To the determent of actual “free and fair” elections.
and their history with lying.
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Parting thought:
Theoretically, Democracy cannot be bought — but it sure can be poisoned, by the constant flow of blatant lies.
Maybe, Money does = Speech. At least it does now ...
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The facts the still out there … somewhere.
The rule of Law too.
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Center for Countering Digital Hate
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