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Elon

DarkNoon

Power Poster IV
Donator
Intelligence Specialist
Joined
Feb 6, 2024
Location
Southern Florida
TWITTER
NuclearID68
BREAKING: Turns out Elon’s also been chatting with Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff—the same guy the U.S. Justice Department called out for creating over 30 internet domains to pump Russian disinformation.

And where were they spreading it?

Right on Musk’s X, aiming to undermine support for Ukraine and manipulate American voters ahead of the election.

What else is Elon letting slide while cozying up to Putin’s crew?


Agree.
 
Elon Musk Is Now
X’s Biggest Promoter
of Anti-Immigrant

Conspiracies:
The billionaire owner is spreading debunked theories of undocumented voters swaying the US election, and growing his influence in the process.

In early October, at the Butler fairgrounds in western Pennsylvania, thousands of Donald Trump supporters gathered for a campaign rally, hoping to see another star: billionaire Elon Musk. When Musk leapt onstage, he lifted his hands high to greet the audience, smiling. But a few minutes into his speech, his tone turned ominous.
The “other side,” Musk warned, wants to “take away your right to vote effectively.” He predicted that the 2024 US presidential race could be the last free election. It was a reference to the conspiracy theory he’s been pushing on social media: that broad election fraud will occur in November by undocumented immigrants illegally casting votes for the Democrats.

Immigration and voter fraud has become, by far, the entrepreneur’s favorite and most popular policy topic online, according to a large-scale Bloomberg analysis of his posts on X, the social network he owns, where he has more than 200 million followers. In 2024, Musk’s frequent posts on immigration — including claims about the crimes attributed to migrants, the pace of their entry into the US, and the false assertion that Democrats are using them to cast votes — have received more reposts than any other policy issue he writes about.

Bloomberg analyzed more than 53,000 posts sent from Musk’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, between December 2011 and October 2024 to determine which topics he remarked on most, and tracked which of his posts received the most engagement. The analysis also revealed patterns in how Musk links immigrants to voter fraud, and reaches a wider audience. The majority of the time, he’s reacting to others’ content with a simple emoji reaction or comment, adding his endorsement without directly repeating it. And his posts generally do not receive notes from X’s fact-checking system, even if demonstrably false.


In the first 10 years of Elon Musk's presence on Twitter, his posting habits — and his engagement — were modest. He posted roughly four times a day during that period.
= Topics Musk posts about
Soon after Musk closed his purchase of Twitter in October 2022, he pledged to turn the platform into a free-speech haven. Musk tweeted about the platform more than anything else and collected nearly 4 million reposts in the month that followed.

In early 2023, Musk instructed his engineers to push his posts into users' feeds first, trying to hold a captive audience, according to Platformer. But by the middle of the year, news about Twitter, then X, had grown relatively stale and Musk posted more about miscellaneous topics.

His posts soon turned increasingly political and — as the 2024 US presidential race got underway — he started promoting conspiracies and misinformation about immigration and voter fraud

immigration and voter fraud became his most frequently posted policy topic — and one that often earned him the most engagement online. From January to March 2024, he posted repeatedly about the false notion that undocumented immigrants were being "imported" by the Democratic Party and would unlawfully cast votes.
Commentary on the topic dropped off in the middle of the year, but picked up again in September.

As the election draws near, Musk's effort to popularize his views on voting and migrants has become relentless — and more effective in terms of engagement.

In 2024, immigration and voter fraud has become Musk's most frequently posted and engaged with policy topic, garnering about 10 billion views. Musk posted more than 1,300 times about the topic overall, with more than 330 posts in the past 2 months alone.
Source: Bloomberg analysis of X data provided by Bright Data
Note: The minority of posts falling under the topics “Other” and “Uncategorized” are not displayed in this chart. Find more details about the analysis in the methodology section at the end of the story.

Musk’s online rhetoric on immigration, analyzed here in statistical depth, does more than boost Trump’s policy plans to deport immigrants. It also plays directly into Trump’s claims that elections are rigged for Democrats. In Musk, the former president has found an influential ally who is willing to launder a false conspiracy theory for the masses, helping lay the groundwork for Trump to once again dispute the results of next month’s election, should they not be in his favor, according to Melissa Ryan, founder of CARD Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation.
“Even in 2016, Trump claimed that if he lost, it would only be because the election was rigged against him. That playbook hasn’t changed,” she said. Trump has spent years claiming that the 2020 election was stolen. More than 60 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies failed because they were unable to prove their allegations. “Musk has put himself in the position of being a super-spreader of anti-immigrant conspiracies, and a valuable asset to helping Trump fan the flames,” Ryan said.

Bloomberg also spoke to representatives of two groups directly impacted by Musk’s rhetoric: immigrants settling in Aurora, Colorado, against a backdrop of fear, and the fans in Butler who believe the lies.

“Elon Musk is not wrong,” Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Democrats aren’t even trying to hide their election interference schemes.” Musk and X didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Musk’s posts about immigration primarily promote misleading narratives: that the election will be unfair because of migrants; that migrants are dangerous, and flooding unchecked into the country; that the vast majority of immigrants have not settled into the US in the “right” way; that migrants have gotten unreasonable, special treatment from the government; and that Democrats are responsible for ushering in large numbers of migrants who go on to commit crimes in the US.
Bloomberg ran a machine learning model on the posts to identify subjects that Musk most often discusses on X, and found that about 1,300 of Musk’s posts in 2024 revolved around immigration and voter fraud. Reporters then manually reviewed hundreds of them to ensure they were properly categorized. Posts were provided by researchers at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub and the data platform Bright Data.

Musk’s commentary on noncitizens voting is based on a “weak to non-existent” understanding of election law, said David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Federal law bars non-US citizens from voting in presidential elections, and voters must legally swear, under penalty of criminal prosecution, that they’re eligible to cast a ballot.

In order to become a US citizen and vote, undocumented immigrants have only a few viable paths, some which take years, such as securing asylum or successfully challenging a deportation order. Meanwhile, state-led investigations by both Republican and Democratic officials have repeatedly found that noncitizen voting is extraordinarily rare — and it’s never been shown to affect the outcome of any election. “Given what we know about how infrequently voter fraud has occurred over the last two or three elections in the US, the odds of drawing a random ballot, and that ballot being fraudulent, approach that of winning the Powerball,” Schultz said.

But as the most-followed account on X, Musk is the platform’s single most important influencer. In early 2023, Musk instructed his engineers to incorporate a special system that pushes his posts into people’s feeds, according to tech news outlet Platformer. He is still the most widely read person on the site today.
At the Butler rally, voters who had traveled from hundreds of miles away echoed Musk’s description of migrants flooding the US and receiving preferential treatment. “As far as our border being wide open? It’s absolutely ridiculous and unsustainable,” said 35-year-old Tom Lavisky, an attendee of the rally who traveled from Ohio to see Musk speak.

In an interview, Lavisky said he believed that undocumented immigrants were reaping a variety of benefits after coming to America, including receiving new cars and food stamps worth thousands of dollars. Under federal guidelines, undocumented immigrants do not qualify for food stamps. “We were born here. It’s not fair,” he said. “More importantly, people aren’t going to let it stand. It doesn’t really matter what the establishment wants. There’s infinitely more of us.”

Musk is bringing his popular posts to life in an ongoing tour of Pennsylvania, telling Trump supporters they can come see him for free — as long as they can declare they already voted. At an appearance near Philadelphia last week, he again repeated the claim that Democrats are bringing migrants in to vote for their party, likening the situation at the US-Mexico border to a “zombie apocalypse.”
Continues 👇
 
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Continuation of Article 👇
In 2019, Musk declared he was “openly moderate,” but his politics have evolved in recent years as he clashed with the Biden administration and other Democrats over actions he perceived as unfair treatment of his companies. In August 2023, Musk proclaimed that a Justice Department lawsuit alleging that SpaceX had discriminated against asylees was a “weaponization” of the agency’s authority “for political purposes.” As he increasingly interacted with online personalities on the far right, he began speaking more openly about the threat of illegal immigration in the US — despite being an immigrant himself, and acknowledging his own citizenship status was once in a legal “gray area.”
With Musk now all in on Trump, he is arguably the former president’s most important backer. He created America PAC, a political action committee that runs the campaign’s ground game in battleground states, pledging to give away $1 million a day to voters for signing his PAC’s petition. He pledged around $75 million to his pro-Trump spending group in the span of just three months, according to federal disclosures. His PAC also started a group on X “dedicated to sharing potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities that Americans are experiencing in the 2024 Election.”

Vice President Kamala Harris has begun more directly campaigning against Musk. Her pick for VP, Tim Walz, recently called Musk Trump’s “running mate.” A recent Harris campaign ad calls Musk a “far-right billionaire” trying to “tip the scales” for Trump.

Musk, 53, and Trump, 78, were not close before the 2024 election cycle. Musk served on the former president’s business advisory councils during Trump’s first term, but quit in June 2017 following Trump’s announcement that the US would pull out of the historic Paris climate agreement. In those days, Musk styled himself as politically independent and made few donations to federal candidates. In 2022, Musk said Trump was too old to hold office and suggested that he should “sail into the sunset.”

Musk’s interests started to align more with Trump’s in the years after he moved to Texas in 2020, during the pandemic. In September 2023, Musk went to the border crossing in Eagle Pass, Texas — a place Republicans had already singled out as emblematic of the migrant crisis. Musk streamed the visit live on X so his following, 150 million-strong at the time, could “see what was really going on.” On that trip, Musk, who was born in South Africa, said he supported immigrants coming to the US but emphasized the need for people to enter the country in an orderly fashion.
By March, Musk was endorsing the former president’s claim that Biden’s border policies were meant to overthrow the country; he also took a meeting with Trump as the candidate sought to woo high-profile donors. In July, after Trump’s ear was struck by a bullet from a would-be assassin in Butler, Musk said publicly for the first time that Trump had his full endorsement for president.

Musk was changing his mind in the public eye. According to Bloomberg’s analysis, since Musk purchased Twitter in late 2022, his activity on the platform has skyrocketed. A typical day in 2024 shows him posting around 60 times; he has also posted as many as 40 times within an hour. That’s sharply up from about a dozen tweets per day in 2022. The billionaire is known to pay close attention to the engagement his posts receive. Any time Musk talks about immigration on X, the reposts, replies and views reliably roll in. Though Musk has written about immigration and voter fraud issues in 2024 with about the same frequency as he’s written about Tesla, the automaker he is chief executive of, his immigration-related posts have amassed more than six times the number of reposts.

As Musk pivoted to politics, his views on immigration and voter fraud filled the feeds of X users.
They're now among his most frequent......and most engaged-with

“Donald Trump famously uses his rallies as a kind of focus group, choosing nicknames and attack lines based on how loudly his audience cheers,” said Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies online networks. “It’s possible that Elon Musk treats X in a similar fashion.”
Musk’s power on the network directs users’ attention to whomever he interacts with. Bloomberg’s analysis also shows that a majority of Musk’s posts about immigration and voter fraud — around 70% — are short replies, many of which amplified or implicitly endorsed misleading conspiracies. Musk posted exclamation marks in response to around 200 posts on X discussing immigration; said “Wow” more than 40 times; and posted emojis like “💯,” “🤔” and “🎯” more than 70 times. The effect is that Musk can stay an arm’s length away from spreading misinformation himself, even as he gives dubious posts attention and engagement.

On the issue of immigration and voter fraud, Musk has engaged with the anonymous far right account @EndWokeness, according to Bloomberg’s analysis, replying approvingly to its posts about the topic more than 70 times in the past two years (and more than 420 times in general over the same period). Other accounts whose anti-immigrant posts he frequently responds to include @KanekoaTheGreat, a proponent of the baseless QAnon conspiracy movement, and Michael Benz, a former Trump State Department official who has routinely promoted racist conspiracy theories online. Neither responded to requests for comment.

In February, @EndWokeness implied on X that US taxpayer money for veterans was being diverted to pay for the needs of migrants in the country. American tax dollars “are being used to house & feed these invaders,” the anonymous account wrote, while there were scores of homeless veterans in the US. Musk replied simply: “Yeah.”

Though higher rates of homelessness among veterans have long been documented and studied, since 2008, a bipartisan effort from Congress overseeing billions in aid for unhoused veterans has resulted in a marked decline in the problem. A spokesperson for the US Department of Veterans Affairs added in an emailed statement that “zero VA funds” are used for any other purpose besides providing health care and benefits to veterans and their families. The @endwokeness account declined to comment, saying they expected a “garbage hit piece,” in a direct message sent on X.
On X, Musk has promoted a program called Community Notes to add context to posts using a network of thousands of volunteers. He has said all posts, including his own, are eligible for this fact-checking. But in a manual review of hundreds of Musk’s most influential posts about immigration and voter fraud, reporters found only two that displayed a Community Note — both of which were cases where Musk had explicitly asked the Community Notes account to weigh in on immigration-related topics. X didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether Musk’s posts are exempt.

This summer, Musk’s attention expanded from the border itself to communities further north where migrants are settling. In late August, he re-posted a video from another user that purportedly showed the notorious Venezuelan street gang, Tren de Aragua, overtaking an apartment complex in the city of Aurora, a Denver suburb. “Insane,” Musk wrote in his post about the video, which was retweeted 60,000 times. Less than two weeks later, Trump mentioned Aurora as an example of a community that had been overtaken by dangerous migrants in his debate with Harris.

Those in Aurora, one of Colorado’s most diverse communities, where newcomers and longtime residents have long coexisted peacefully, are having trouble reconciling Musk’s commentary with the reality in their lives. Bianca Gardie runs a nonprofit, Amigos de México, which helps migrants get settled and is located just a short drive from the apartments that have allegedly been overtaken by Venezuelan gangs. Yet Gardie and her staff have noticed no trace of violence or instability — the only turmoil they hear about is on the news.

Although none of the migrants she works with have reported feeling unsafe in Aurora, the stories they see online nonetheless give them pause, Gardie said. “Whatever information comes out affects people and their stability, and generates a sense of fear,” she said in Spanish.
On a recent Friday afternoon, Andrea Loya, executive director of the nonprofit Casa de Paz, sat parked in an unmarked van, waiting to greet the next group of migrants to be released from detention. Shortly after reports of alleged Venezuelan gang activity in Aurora surfaced online, the nonprofit began receiving threatening phone calls. The misinformation, she said, is “putting a target on Venezuelan folks.”

Reaching Aurora was the culmination of a nearly two-year journey for Yusnides Pericaguan, 40, who left Venezuela after extortion by local officials forced her to abandon her business and head north. Since arriving in Colorado, Pericaguan has mostly kept to herself, leaving home only to apply for work and go to the local food bank. She’s solitary by nature, yet she also worries about what might happen if she were spotted among other Venezuelans. The stereotypes sting, yet Pericaguan said she doesn’t begrudge Americans for the “bullying and xenophobia.”

“They are defining their space, their land,” she said in Spanish. “I don’t judge them. I understand. I put myself in their place … They have their reasons for not wanting us here. And we have our needs.”

At the Butler rally, any time the subject of illegal immigration came up from speakers, it drew the loudest cheers from the audience.
 
Elon Musk Is Now
X’s Biggest Promoter
of Anti-Immigrant

Conspiracies:
It is why I have mostly stopped using Twitter and I'm only using articles and reputable media Outlets for reporting if anyone's noticed. Mostly or trying to at least. Can't avoid it sometimes with foreign media that at times are only twitter based.
 
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I think the pattern is that Elon Musk is an eccentric rich guy with nothing better to do with his time and money than to seek attention. He's a fool to think he is going to get anything meaningful from Putin outside of an impromptu fall from a high window. Quite frankly, I ignore him.

If Trump does win and offers Musk a "special assistant to the President" type of position, just think of it as dumb counseling dumber. If Putin offers Musk a position, it would be dumb counseling dumberer.....
 
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Immigrants are becoming U.S. citizens at the fastest average rate in a decade​

Of the close to 3.3 million immigrants who have become citizens during the Biden administration, processing speed sits at under five months, on par with 2013 and 2014.
It’s unclear how many of the new voters live in battleground states, but a number of the states where Kamala Harris or Donald Trump must win have large and growing numbers of voting-age naturalized citizens, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

In Savannah, Ga., people from 19 countries streamed into a federal courthouse recently to take the oath of allegiance.
 

16 states allow undocumented migrants to obtain driver’s licenses​

The Massachusetts House is slated to debate a bill that would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. Should that bill eventually become law, Massachusetts would join 16 other states and the District of Columbia, which have enacted similar legislation.
 

Map Shows Voter ID Laws by State​

As of April 2024, 35 states require some form of ID at the polls, according to Ballotpedia. Of those, 24 states mandate photo identification, while 11 allow non-photo IDs. The remaining 15 states do not require ID to vote in person on Election Day.
 
So now they want to make it illegal to talk to someone. That should work well in putting out the fires burning all around the world! :mad:
If so you're missing the point. Plus the stuff that Musk himself apparently unearthed, well... Musk himself worked in the US as an illegal immigrant. Anyway, that's not what I was wanting to tell you. It's the circumstances that make it murky, not that someone in the west dares to talk to Putin. Musk is the owner of a social media platform that effectively has unchecked moderation, allowing misinformation of all kinds to be spread from any actor. Putin is the president of a nation that has always had a deliberate tactic of spreading misinformation to sow discourse and polarization among its adversaries. Musk speaks to Putin regularly. At worst he actively supports the Russian effort to polarize the west, at best he's an unscrupulous businessman not caring about what the intentions of his contacts could be.
 
If so you're missing the point. Plus the stuff that Musk himself apparently unearthed, well... Musk himself worked in the US as an illegal immigrant. Anyway, that's not what I was wanting to tell you. It's the circumstances that make it murky, not that someone in the west dares to talk to Putin. Musk is the owner of a social media platform that effectively has unchecked moderation, allowing misinformation of all kinds to be spread from any actor. Putin is the president of a nation that has always had a deliberate tactic of spreading misinformation to sow discourse and polarization among its adversaries. Musk speaks to Putin regularly. At worst he actively supports the Russian effort to polarize the west, at best he's an unscrupulous businessman not caring about what the intentions of his contacts could be.
 
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Americans have a right to read and access information deemed foreign propaganda. No, you don't! We must have perpetual war!
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, this micro-blogging site has been taken over by: Nazis, Russian disinformation accounts, misogynists, Ableists, anti-public health goons, racists, Jew haters, and various other hateful groups. Government should regulate Twitter or shut it down.
 
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