Last week, he responded to a user who wondered about the “mysterious” absence of flu cases during the Covid-19 pandemic. “Good question”, commented the director of Twitter, who has interacted several times with anti-vaccine users and expressed doubts about the severity of the health crisis.
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This response is one of at least 40 exchanges Musk has had with “KanekoaTheGreat,” an account that regularly shares QAnon conspiracy theories with its more than 370.000 subscribers, whose author says it was “resurrected by Elon.”
Thanks to data from the website PolitiTweet, dedicated to tracking the tweets of public figures until Twitter cut off their access, AFP was able to analyze thousands of messages published by Musk between the end of October and last March.
In these months, the billionaire shared a false article with the CNN logo and erroneously claimed that the police had escorted one of the Capitol invaders on January 6, 2021. He also gave space to a publication that blamed LGBTQ people for attacks on mass shootings and supported a false recount of casualties in Ukraine.
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“We are running out of 'conspiracies' that turned out to be true!” Musk said in March, responding to a tweet that cited Covid-19 and vaccine safety as some of the “biggest lies in the media.”
Days later, he tweeted that “the best way to combat misinformation is to respond with accurate information.”
Musk's thread
Experts say Musk's Twitter activity is worrying, and not just because of his online influence.
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“Musk has almost 135 million followers and has forced engineers to increase the visibility of his tweets, which is why we should be concerned when he spreads incorrect information,” Brendan Nyhan, professor and political scientist at Dartmouth University, told AFP.
“But, above all, I worry about what these tweets reveal about the thinking of the person responsible for decisions at a large social network,” he added.
Researchers have linked recent policy changes to the Twitter, such as paid certification and the reestablishment of some accounts previously banned on the platform, to the increase in misinformation on the network.
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Media analytics site NewsGuard found that accounts paying for its certification are flooding the platform with false claims.
Musk directs users' attention to some of these accounts. “I have the seal of approval from Elon Musk”, said “KanekoaTheGreat” on Telegram, after one of these responses.
A report published in January by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based panel of experts, details increased exchanges between Musk and accounts sharing far-right content since he acquired the Twitter, including accounts that had spread incorrect information about the elections in the United States.
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Among the accounts that the director of Twitter The most resonant is that of Ian Miles Cheong, a far-right blogger, who received at least 60 responses from Musk, according to AFP analysis. On one occasion, Musk amplified the reach of a tweet, in which he blamed American President Joe Biden for an immigration program that began with his predecessor, Donald Trump.
According to Nyhan, accounts like this “probably” increase their “reach and prominence”, thanks to the visibility that Musk gives them.
O Twitter responded to AFP's requests for comment with a poop-shaped emoji (💩) – an automatic response launched in March by Musk.
(With AFP)
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