Inside Elon Musk’s Web of Disinformation
Elon Musk’s alarming record of deception
This article is the third of a 5-part series on media manipulation and its effects/strategies. You will get a deeper insight into Elon Musk's framing and deception efforts, with many examples and sources to look through.
This part will be about Elon Musk's deception of the public and disinformation strategies.
If you're new here, the previous parts are linked just below this brief introduction. While Part 1 outlines the power of communication as a whole, Part 2 offers a rich, research-based understanding of the specific tools the media landscape uses to shape narratives and public opinion.
This third part is divided into 3 chapters. Chapter 2 will be about Trump's weaponization of language. While there will be an in-depth analysis of Trump's rhetoric on January 6, this first chapter of part 3 will be all about Musk and his deceptive practices.
Table of Contents
Musk’s Incentive
After buying Twitter and renaming it "X," Elon Musk's intention to build the "digital town square" has become clearer with each passing day since the 2024 presidential election. At first, he claimed that his purchase was about facilitating free speech and making X/Twitter better than ever.
But this plan is quickly rebranded, and X becomes Elon's own tool for political power and enrichment. Musk, who didn't hide his support for Trump, did everything from funding to public campaigning (alongside Trump) as a sign of his support and commitment. This is no coincidence, as a win for Trump means a win for Musk.
Elon hasn't always been a fan of Trump. Quite the opposite, in fact. He criticized Trump.
Musk has not always supported Trump. He previously described himself as a moderate, halfway been the Democrats and Republicans. In 2022, he suggested Trump was too old to be President and that he should "sail into the sunset." Trump responded by saying Musk had "begged" him for subsidies while he was in the White House.
But by the end of the 2024 election, any enmity was gone and Musk had chipped in an estimated $119 million to the Trump campaign coffers.1
It's obvious and really no secret that lobbying goes a long way in the corporate world, and Musk knows it. That's why he changed his stance and knew he had to follow Trump in a sycophantic way to gain a market advantage later on. And his money turned out to be well spent. Musk increased his value by an incredible 80%, increasing his net worth from $264 billion to $486 billion between November 5 and December 19 alone.2
Foul Play
Anyone who has used X/Twitter in the past year remembers seeing Musk's tweets first on the timeline. There was no way around it. This was in response to President Biden and Musk tweeting about the Super Bowl and Biden getting way more impressions than Biden. I wish I was making this up.
The effort was sparked when a tweet from the president, who has 37m followers, generated nearly 29m impressions while a similar tweet from Musk – who has 128m followers – generated little more than 9.1m impressions.
A Twitter employee and cousin of Elon Musk, James Musk, posted urgently in the company Slack at 2.30am the following Monday morning, asking all employees who can code to participate. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem,” he wrote. “This is high urgency.”
Engineers then deployed a new algorithm that artificially inflated Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000, ensuring that more than 90% of Musk’s 128.9m followers see them. Many who do not follow Musk are also being served his tweets in their feed through the “For you” tab of the app’s home page, which curates tweets from a number of accounts, including those a user is not following.3
This change stayed in place and was later used to drive traffic and support to support Donald Trump.
Disinformation
According to the APA, misinformation is false or inaccurate information—getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead—intentionally misstating the facts.4 And he disinformed.5
Musk funded a Republican political action committee (PAC), Building America's Future, which ran Facebook ads and text messages spreading false information to Republicans about Kamala Harris' policy goals. It impersonated her, set up a fake website, and drove voters to the fake site while pretending it was coming from her own campaign team.6 It's important to note that these goals were not included in or supported by the Harris platform.
On October 18th, investigative journalists at 404media.co revealed that the Musk-funded Future Coalition PAC
is targeting Muslim voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania with diametrically opposed political advertisements about Kamala Harris.
In largely Muslim-populated areas in Michigan, the super PAC painted Harris as a close friend of Israel, while the largely Jewish-populated areas in parts of Pennsylvania were served ads that painted Harris as an anti-Semite, claiming that she “support[s] denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands.”7
Here's an X video from activists @ByDonkeys, outlining the findings.
I recommend that you read the report itself, as it provides a wealth of information and detailed insights.
These opposing ads were constructed to give the illusion that these were Harris's claims and beliefs. A clear sign of deliberate and malicious disinformation. Framing her in a malicious way and gradually priming the electorate for election day. Foul play. My previous article on the specific manipulation effects the media is capable of using explains these terms in detail.
Three months before the actual election, Musk also shared a post from another user who created a fake AI video of Harris with fabricated claims. Not only were the claims unsubstantiated, but it also sporadically included real clips of her and the "Harris for President" branding.
“I, Kamala Harris, am your Democrat candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed his senility at the debate,” the AI voice says in the video. It claims Harris is a “diversity hire” because she is a woman and a person of color, and it says she doesn’t know “the first thing about running the country.” The video retains “Harris for President” branding. It also adds in some authentic past clips of Harris.8
Elon simply responds to the ensuing backlash by saying that comedy isn't illegal, but his efforts around fake campaign ads are treading on that dangerous legal line and have long since left the moral playing field.
This only raises legitimate concerns for the future of our democratic processes.
The next article will be about Kamala Harris and her attempts to appease both sides of the political isle when it comes to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Resources
https://www.dw.com/en/elon-musk-why-he-supported-trump/a-70724719
https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/elon-musk-wealth-half-a-trillion-post-election-surge-235243a9
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk-changes-twitter-algorithm-super-bowl-slump-report
https://www.apa.org/topics/journalism-facts/misinformation-disinformation
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2024/09/27/misinformation-megaphone-musk-stokes-tension-before-us-election/
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2024/11/03/when-it-comes-to-disinformation-about-the-us-presidential-election-elon-musk-outdoes-russia_6731441_13.html
https://www.404media.co/this-is-exactly-how-an-elon-musk-funded-pac-is-microtargeting-muslims-and-jews-with-opposing-messages/
https://www.fastcompany.com/91164491/elon-musk-shares-parody-ad-kamala-harris-voice-cloned-ai-politics