Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Concerns Arise Over Elon Musk's Influence on Election Information

Transcript

Concerns Arise Over Elon Musk's Influence on Election Information · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  How are election officials handling Elon Musk's social
• 0:03
  media influence, especially when it spreads misleading
• 0:07
  information? And why is it challenging for
• 0:09
  states like Michigan and Arizona to Fact Check him directly on X?
• 0:15
  Also, what strategy are these officials using to counter Elon
• 0:18
  Musk's reach, and how is Musk himself responding to them?
• 0:22
  Election officials in key battleground states, including
• 0:25
  Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona are expressing concerns
• 0:28
  about Elon Musk's influence in spreading false information on
• 0:32
  X, with some officials going to great lengths to reach Elon Musk
• 0:36
  directly. Steven Richer, an election
• 0:39
  official in Arizona's Maricopa County, shared that he even
• 0:43
  tried getting messages hand delivered to Elon Musk urging
• 0:47
  him to stop amplifying unsubstantiated claims.
• 0:51
  Reichert, who's faced serious threats for defending the 2020
• 0:55
  election results, says that despite persistent efforts to
• 0:58
  correct the record, Elon Musk's massive online following makes
• 1:02
  it nearly impossible to curb the spread of misinformation.
• 1:06
  Now, the need to counter falsehoods around elections has
• 1:09
  become a full second time job for many election officials, a
• 1:13
  situation that arose in response to misinformation that spread
• 1:16
  widely after Donald Trump's 2020 election loss.
• 1:19
  However, Musk's ownership of X and his high profile support for
• 1:23
  Trump have introduced new hurdles.
• 1:26
  The X latforms influential reach means that any falsehood that
• 1:30
  Musk shares can spread really quickly like wildfire over often
• 1:34
  overwhelming a local election of if officials to provide
• 1:38
  verification information. Now, Michigan's Secretary of
• 1:41
  State Jocelyn Benson has been particularly vocal in countering
• 1:45
  Musk's misinformation. Recently, she fact checked a
• 1:48
  claim that Musk made about Michigan's registered voters
• 1:51
  directly responding on X. Her post gained over 33 million
• 1:55
  views, reflecting substantial interest.
• 1:57
  But Musk maintained his position, accusing Benson of
• 2:00
  blatantly lying to the public. Benson, frustrated with by
• 2:03
  Musk's response, lamented the missing opportunity for Musk to
• 2:07
  use his resources to help us restore and ensure people can
• 2:11
  have rightly placed faith in our election outcomes, whatever they
• 2:15
  may be. Now, Elon Musk's influence on
• 2:19
  election decisions across X has left election officials 6 days
• 2:23
  before Election Day scrambling to find a strategy to counter
• 2:27
  the spread of misinformation. Efforts by officials in
• 2:30
  Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania to set the record
• 2:32
  straight are often overshadowed by Musk's massive online
• 2:35
  following, with his post quickly gaining visibility.
• 2:39
  And without effective controls on X's algorithm, which
• 2:42
  frequently promotes high profile accounts, election authorities
• 2:45
  say they face a structural disadvantage in ensuring
• 2:49
  accurate election information is widely seen.
• 2:52
  A social media platform known as X has provided minimal response
• 2:56
  to Musk's election related posts, though a platform
• 2:59
  spokesperson indicated that X enforces policies and election
• 3:02
  interference and misleading content now.
• 3:05
  This response, however, stops short of addressing Musk's own
• 3:08
  posts, leaving election officials without direct
• 3:11
  intervention to prevent the spread of unverified claims.
• 3:15
  CN Ms. attempts to contact Musk and also the Washington Post and
• 3:19
  all of the other major media outlets.
• 3:23
  They can't get a hold of the guy.
• 3:24
  They take it to X and they make comments on his posts and they
• 3:29
  refute him. But most of the time it doesn't
• 3:32
  work. Nade Di Resto, a disinformation,
• 3:35
  said that election officials are simply unequipped to counter the
• 3:39
  reach of high profile accounts like Musk.
• 3:41
  Because of that, election officials have a very hard job.
• 3:44
  Their job is to be election officials, not be tweeters.
• 3:48
  That's what they said. She asked.
• 3:50
  If prominent figures are allowed to amplify unverified claims
• 3:53
  without equivalent promotion of accurate information, it creates
• 3:57
  a structural disadvantage and that election authorities can
• 4:00
  rarely overcome this. Now this week, Elon Musk
• 4:03
  encouraged his followers on X to report supposed election
• 4:06
  irregularities to an election integrity community on the
• 4:09
  platform, which is administrator by his America Pack, an
• 4:13
  organization supporting Trump's campaign.
• 4:16
  And election officials quickly noticed that some of the claims
• 4:19
  appearing on this community feed had already been debunked by
• 4:22
  state authorities, further complicating their task of
• 4:25
  promoting factual information. The CEO of American Sunlight
• 4:30
  Project called the situation staggering with Musk's role at
• 4:34
  the helm of XI. Don't know if anything can Fact
• 4:37
  Check him now. Benson, who has faced security
• 4:40
  threats in the past for responding to Musk, acknowledges
• 4:42
  the personal risks associated with fact checking the tech
• 4:45
  billionaire, they said. The first time he attacked our
• 4:48
  election system, I had to take a beat and realize that if I were
• 4:51
  to respond as I did, ultimately I'd have to check to make sure
• 4:55
  my family was safe first. Benson says she now alerts her
• 4:59
  security team whenever she respond to Musk's posts to
• 5:02
  prepare for an uptick in threats.
• 5:05
  Now, to mitigate these security risks, Benson has broadened her
• 5:08
  approach to disseminate accurate election misinformation.
• 5:12
  Her office has gathered leaders from business and labor sectors
• 5:16
  to brief them on Michigan's election process and the state's
• 5:19
  commitment to counting every legitimate vote.
• 5:22
  And by empowering these local leaders as messengers, she hopes
• 5:25
  to reach more residents with verified information before
• 5:29
  misinformation can spread widely on platforms like X.
• 5:32
  Now, officials in Pennsylvania are pursuing similar strategies
• 5:36
  to Fact Check Musk's claims, though they acknowledge the
• 5:39
  limitations. And one election official in the
• 5:41
  state referred to Musk as a huge problem and said current fact
• 5:44
  checking efforts are largely about establishing a paper trail
• 5:48
  to document the accuracy of their statements.
• 5:50
  And Musk's influence in Pennsylvania is not just limited
• 5:53
  to his social media activity, though.
• 5:54
  He's also involved in a legal matter regarding the $1 million
• 5:58
  giveaway that his America PAC is conducting daily.
• 6:01
  Sweepstakes they offer to registered voters in
• 6:04
  battleground states has led to a lawsuit that Musk is attempting
• 6:07
  to move to federal court now. His lawyers filed a motion of
• 6:11
  removal late Wednesday night, a procedural move that would pause
• 6:15
  the case in state court and shift the decision to a federal
• 6:18
  judge. Now down in Georgia, election
• 6:21
  officials have decided the direct engagement with Musk on X
• 6:24
  is unlikely to yield any results.
• 6:26
  Instead, they're relying on press conferences, a method they
• 6:29
  successfully used in 2020 to dispel misinformation.
• 6:32
  By presenting officials who openly refute the latest
• 6:35
  election related falsehoods and by using scheduled public
• 6:38
  updates, they hope to present clear and consistent information
• 6:42
  without engaging with Elon Musk directly.
• 6:45
  Now, the backlash against social media monitoring for election
• 6:48
  misinformation has affected platforms beyond X, making it
• 6:51
  increasingly difficult for election officials to counteract
• 6:54
  falsehoods. One official from the
• 6:56
  battleground states noted that the unlike other companies such
• 7:00
  as Meta, X lacks a clear line of communication complicating
• 7:03
  attempts to address misinformation directly on a
• 7:06
  platform. Jankowicz, a disinformation
• 7:09
  expert who has been a target of criticism from some conservative
• 7:13
  lawmakers, pointed to the contrasting silence surrounding
• 7:16
  Musk's influence on X. They said what Elon Musk is
• 7:19
  doing, the campaigning that he's doing, the donation that he's
• 7:22
  making, the way he has engineered Twitter to be a
• 7:24
  maelstrom of conservative disinformation is far closer to
• 7:28
  election interference than any of the allegations that
• 7:31
  conservatives have made against social media platforms from 2016
• 7:35
  to 2022. Now, Democratic lawmakers are
• 7:39
  raising concerns about social media companies preparedness to
• 7:42
  manage election related misinformation.
• 7:45
  Senator Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence
• 7:48
  Committee, expressed frustration about the platform's lack of
• 7:51
  transparency on their plans to address misleading content
• 7:55
  before and after Election Day. Warner noted that he's still
• 7:58
  wanting on a full answer or of what they're going to do to
• 8:03
  surge capabilities. Now that's of course, it's a a
• 8:07
  huge concern. An X's absence at a recent
• 8:11
  Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on foreign influence and
• 8:14
  social media has also intensified.
• 8:16
  Lawmaker Warner mentioned that Nick Pickles, X's head of global
• 8:20
  affairs, had been invited but resigned on September 6th and
• 8:23
  the company did not send a replacement.
• 8:25
  An X spokesperson confirmed that Pickles departure, but did not
• 8:29
  explain the decision to forgo representation at the hearing.
• 8:33
  Now, Elon Musk's America PAC has received judicial permission to
• 8:37
  proceed with cash giveaways to registered voters, at least
• 8:40
  temporarily, following a ruling from a Pennsylvania State judge.
• 8:43
  And Musk's PAC has been offering daily $1 million prizes to
• 8:47
  voters in key swing states contingent upon their signing a
• 8:51
  petition. Now, the petition reportedly
• 8:54
  includes a pledge to support the US Constitution, though some
• 8:57
  officials are concerned that the cash for petition format may
• 9:00
  conflict with US electoral laws. Philadelphia District Attorney
• 9:04
  Lawrence Krasner filed a lawsuit against Musk earlier this week,
• 9:07
  calling on the courts to halt the giveaways.
• 9:09
  Krasner's suit urges that Musk must be stopped immediately
• 9:13
  before the upcoming presidential election.
• 9:15
  Determined that Krasner's case would be paused while a federal
• 9:19
  court decides if it will hear the case, a delay that makes it
• 9:22
  unlikely any financial decision will be reached before the
• 9:25
  November 7th election. The court hearing featured
• 9:28
  remarks from John Summers, an attorney working with District
• 9:31
  Attorney Krasner, who told reporters they would push to
• 9:34
  have the matter returned to state court.
• 9:36
  That the federal court declines to take it up.
• 9:39
  Summers argued the case centers on state laws, adding after all,
• 9:42
  this is a case that involves state law issues.
• 9:45
  Musk, who was required to attend the Philadelphia court hearing,
• 9:48
  did not appear this month, offering daily $1 million awards
• 9:52
  for registered voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada,
• 9:55
  Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina until November
• 9:58
  5th. And these 7 battleground states
• 10:01
  are considered crucial in the 2024 election, with polls
• 10:04
  indicating a tight race between President Donald Trump, who Musk
• 10:07
  supports, and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
• 10:11
  Eligibility for Musk's $1,000,000 giveaway requires
• 10:14
  participants to provide personal information, including phone
• 10:17
  numbers and addresses, and to sign a statement affirming their
• 10:20
  commitment to the Constitution. Krasner's lawsuit describes this
• 10:24
  structure as a lottery and alleges that it constitutes an
• 10:27
  unlawful lottery. And according to Krasner, the
• 10:30
  sweepstakes Lowell's Philadelphia citizens to give up
• 10:33
  their personal identification information and make a political
• 10:37
  pledge in exchange for the chance to win $1,000,000.
• 10:40
  The lawsuit also accuses Musk and his pack of using deceptive,
• 10:44
  vague or misleading statements that could mislead voters.
• 10:48
  Under consumer protection laws. This warning could qualify as
• 10:51
  false advertising, which Musk's attorney has strongly refuted.
• 10:55
  In a federal court filing, Musk's lawyers argued the
• 10:58
  lawsuit's actual purpose was to curb Musk's influence on the
• 11:01
  election. They said the complaint, in
• 11:04
  truth, has little to do with state law claims of nuisance and
• 11:07
  consumer protection. Now Musk's legal team stated,
• 11:10
  adding that it aims to prevent any supposed interference by
• 11:14
  Musk's PAC in the upcoming election.
• 11:16
  Now, Musk's PAC received prior warning from the Department of
• 11:19
  Justice, which noted that the cash giveaways could breach
• 11:22
  federal election regulations. Musk has, however, assured
• 11:26
  potential participants they do not need to identify as
• 11:29
  Republican or even vote to qualify for the prize.
• 11:32
  As Musk continues to press forward with his past campaign,
• 11:35
  the legal proceedings and official scrutiny reflect
• 11:39
  ongoing concerns about the potential influence of his
• 11:42
  platform on the 2024 election.