Ahead of the US elections, X’s billionaire owner Elon Musk is using the platform as his own political megaphone.
On July 26, Musk posted a video of Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, featuring a deepfake of Harris’ voice in which she is heard saying she is the “ultimate DEI recruit” and a “puppet of the deep state.” The post is now marked with community annotations indicating it is a parody. However, many have argued that the video, shared without proper context, may violate X’s policy on synthetic media, i.e. media altered with AI.
This is the culmination of Musk’s recent political comments. Over the past month, Musk publicly endorsed former President Donald Trump, then promoted unfounded conspiracy theories that a “coup” occurred after Biden withdrew from the presidential race, and suggested that the assassination attempt on Trump may have been the result of a deliberate botched Secret Service effort. After endorsing Trump, Musk announced he was launching a pro-Trump political action committee (PAC) and initially pledged to donate $45 million per month, but then backed off.
Former employees in Twitter’s trust and safety division say Musk’s increasingly partisan behavior around the U.S. election and other major events shows he’s doing exactly what former Twitter executives accused him of playing politics.
“This is astounding hypocrisy,” said one former Twitter employee. “Musk is smart enough to know that social media is a medium and that it is a means to control speech.”
Three former employees, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, expressed concern that Musk is becoming a new type of person — someone willing to use his platform to change politics at home and abroad, and who is willing to endure regulatory fines and reduced advertising revenue to do so.
“He’s consolidated his power and systematically dismantled all of the markers of credibility within the company,” the former employee said. “But I think it’s even more significant that the person he’s targeting is a presidential candidate.”
Officials seem to agree: Earlier this week, the secretaries of state of Minnesota, Washington, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Mexico sent letters to X demanding changes to Grok, the platform’s generative AI search tool, after it returned false information that Harris had missed the deadline to vote in the presidential election in nine states.
Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.
Musk has been preparing for this moment for years. When he bought Twitter in 2022, he promised free speech absolutism. After the acquisition, Musk immediately fired most of the company’s policy and trust and safety staff, who were responsible for keeping hateful and misinformation off the platform, including guiding the platform through a contentious election. As former employees pointed out, the company now has no manpower to deal with a flood of election-related misinformation, much less one that Musk himself might spread.
