Elon Musk / Reuters/Mike Segar

Washington, United States

With incendiary, misleading posts to his 200 million followers, Elon Musk has courted criticism for cranking up the political temperature ahead of an already polarized US election through his influential platform that is plagued with misinformation.

Researchers fear there may be little to stop Musk -- who has endorsed Donald Trump -- from using X, formerly Twitter, and his personal account to sway voters in favor of the Republican nominee, call into question the legitimacy of the electoral process, and provoke violence against political rivals and poll workers.

"Musk has a huge following on X and he treats the platform like his own misinformation megaphone," Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), told AFP.

Musk has amplified debunked falsehoods from politicians, including Trump, that Democrats are "importing" migrants into the United States to vote in the November election and that immigrants from Haiti in Ohio were killing and eating pets.

Soon after a second assassination attempt on Trump, Musk posted a comment -- alongside a thinking emoji -- that "no one is even trying to assassinate" President Joe Biden and the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Musk deleted the post, which the White House called "irresponsible" while adding that violence should never be "encouraged or joked about."

Musk also faced criticism for sharing a deepfake video in which a voiceover mimicking Harris calls Biden senile and declares that she does not "know the first thing about running the country."

The video was originally posted by an X account linked to the conservative podcaster Chris Kohls and labeled a "parody," but Musk's repost made no such disclosure.

'Much impact'

False or misleading election claims on X by Musk have amassed nearly 1.2 billion views, CCDH reported last month. Its researchers identified 50 posts by Musk since January containing election claims that were debunked by independent fact-checkers.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk, analysts say, appears to have supplanted the role Trump once played on the platform.

"What gave Trump's tweets so much impact in 2016 -- and throughout his presidency -- was not just that they were seen by people on Twitter, but how much media coverage they got," Joshua Tucker, co-director of the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics, told AFP.

"What is happening with Musk these days on Twitter/X feels similar: his posts are not just seen on the site, but they also seem to be getting a lot of pickup in the media."

The platform is very different today compared to the previous 2020 election, when it was largely seen as a clearinghouse of reliable information.

Since he purchased it in 2022 for $44 billion, Musk has aggressively sought to model the site as a censorship-free haven and a superior source to mainstream media -- winning plaudits from US conservatives strongly averse to social media content moderation.

He has gutted trust and safety teams, scaled back content moderation efforts, and restored known conspiracy theorists to the platform, making it what researchers call a cesspool of disinformation.

In August, five US states sent an open letter to Musk, imploring him to fix X's AI chatbot –- known as Grok -- after it shared misinformation about the election.

'Losing battle'

Outside the US, Musk is not always offered the same freedom to let users post whatever they want.

In Brazil, a high-profile judge ordered the suspension of X after Musk refused to remove dozens of right-wing accounts accused of spreading fake news, and then failed to name a new legal representative in the country as ordered.

Musk appeared to capitulate last week, with the company's lawyers saying that X had complied with the orders.

EU regulators meanwhile are currently carrying out a wide-ranging probe into X to see how effectively it combats disinformation.

If found at fault, X faces major fines or orders that it take urgent action to comply with EU rules.

Australia is planning similar regulation and in Britain, new rules are about to come into effect that could give authorities more say over how platforms control their content.

"Musk's reputation is slowly losing in the court of public opinion, with people increasingly calling out his authoritarian tactics," Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the nonprofit watchdog Free Press, told AFP.

"He can continue down this sad path, but it's a losing battle."