Elon Musk has been branded a “mogul of misinformation” in Rolling Stone magazine two years after completing his $44 billion takeover of Twitter (now X).
The Tesla billionaire was proudly snapped standing next to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort this week as they met to discuss a significant financial investment into fringe political party Reform UK.
It comes just months after similar cash injections propelled Donald Trump back into the White House, handing Musk a key governmental advisory role.
Since taking the keys to Twitter HQ, far-right figures such as Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson have enjoyed a hero’s return on the platform and were allowed to spread misinformation with impunity ahead of the Southport Riots.
As shops were ransacked and hotels housing migrants were set alight, Musk tweeted from afar: Civil war is inevitable”, “civil war is inevitable”, “civil war is inevitable”.
ALSO READ: How Elon Musk turned X into a breeding ground for far-right hate
Other faceless accounts, such as Inevitable West, have racked up millions of views by posting misinformation, often attracting interactions from Musk himself.
As Miles Klee put it in Rolling Stone magazine, it demonstrates how X has become one of the biggest purveyors of online misinformation since the multi-billion takeover in 2022.
“Musk and X – where he reigns not just as owner but the most-followed user – have become essential to the life cycle of incendiary falsehoods and conspiracy theories”, Klee writes.
“While mainstream social media companies have long tried to prevent such content from gaining traction, leaving extremists to ply their lies on smaller, obscure, unmoderated networks, Musk fired the Twitter teams tasked with battling deceptive material.”
Klee notes that changing the verification system into a “pay-to-play” scheme has also allowed subscribers, rather than genuine public figures to gain notoriety.
“It meant that suddenly, for the first time, a major online resource many relied on for news and information was overrun by the manipulative trolls formerly relegated to the fringes of the social web.”
And, of course, at the centre of it all is Musk, “whose turn to hard-right ideology has led him to spout and amplify untruths with abandon, algorithmically forcing them onto an audience of millions.”
Left in its wake is a once proud platform that we used to rely on, consigned to becoming a sewer of misinformation.
Related: Jeremy Corbyn says Musk donation to Reform is ‘frightening’