It’s Time to Make Elon Musk Pay for His Web of Misinformation | Opinion

In a time where misinformation spreads like wildfire, the responsibility of those who control the most powerful platforms in the world cannot be understated.

While most media today are knee-deep into writing about last night’s—whatever that was—between Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump on X, Musk finds himself at the center of a more important and potentially much longer-lasting controversy about fake news. The nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) recently reported that false or misleading claims about the U.S. election posted by Musk have garnered nearly 1.2 billion views this year alone.

The CCDH’s analysis identified 50 instances where Musk shared election-related claims that had been debunked by independent fact-checkers but nonetheless spread rapidly across the platform. Even more concerning, none of these posts were accompanied by a “Community Note”—a user-driven fact-checking feature meant to add context or correct misinformation. If this seems reminiscent of last night’s complete failure to fact-check anything Trump said, you’re paying attention.

This situation is seriously troubling on multiple fronts as it raises critical questions about the integrity of our democratic processes and the role that tech giants, particularly their leaders, play in either upholding or undermining those processes.

When the owner of a major social media platform, who also happens to be a relatively new but very enthusiastic supporter of one of the presidential candidates disseminates false information to hundreds of millions of followers without any checks, the implications for democracy are profound.

What’s arguably worse is that this tech scandal is happening in the context of deeply deteriorating public trust in large tech companies, whose actions and inaction can sway public opinion on an unprecedented scale.

Here’s the thing: democracy can only truly thrive when we are all well informed. The principle that voters should have access to accurate information to make informed decisions is foundational to any democratic society, not just the United States. But the very fabric of democracy is put at risk when misinformation and disinformation become tools to manipulate public opinion—which was exactly the design and execution of Musk’s false election claims. When undertaken by someone as influential as Elon Musk it is not just an attack on the truth; it is an attack on democracy itself.

Musk’s actions, as highlighted by the CCDH report, illustrate how powerful individuals can exploit digital platforms to propagate their own agendas, with little to no accountability. The fact that X is now under the ownership of Musk, who has the platform’s largest audience with 193 million followers, further exacerbates this issue. In this scenario, the lines between personal belief, corporate power, and political influence blur, creating a dangerous potion that threatens the integrity of our electoral process.

Fear of this type of mass disinformation was one of the major red flags many of saw when Musk was set buy Twitter. And such concerns led many people like me—a decade-long power user of the platform—to close our accounts.

This situation is unsurprising yet particularly alarming given that this is the first presidential election since Musk acquired Twitter and rebranded it enigmatically X. The stakes have never been higher, and the precedent set here could have far-reaching consequences. If the owner of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms can spread falsehoods without facing any meaningful consequences, what does that say about the future of free and fair elections in the digital age?

For years, companies like Facebook (now Meta), Google, and Twitter have faced intense scrutiny over their handling of misinformation, data privacy, and their overall impact on society. The situation with Elon Musk and X adds another layer of complexity to this issue. When a tech mogul uses his platform to spread misleading information, it not only damages the credibility of the platform itself but also fuels public cynicism about the role of tech companies in society.

Once again, the failure of X’s Community Notes feature to correct Musk’s false claims further erodes trust (if there was any trust left) in the platform’s ability to self-regulate. If user-driven fact-checking systems are ineffective against the platform’s owner/most powerful influencer, is there any path for the average user to be protected from misinformation?

One potential regulatory solution is to hold platform owners and executives personally—and financially—accountable for the spread of misinformation. If you’re going to run the platform like a B-movie villain, go ahead, but it’ll cost you.

We have to ask ourselves how many more election cycles are going to pass before we’ve had enough of this concentration of digital power in the hands of so few individuals. As we saw last week with the Google decision, breaking up these monopolies or imposing restrictions on their operations could be a step toward protecting democracy and restoring public trust.

A Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, Aron Solomon, JD, is the chief strategy officer forAmplify. He has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world. Aron has been featured in Newsweek, Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes, CBS News, CNBC, USA Today, ESPN, Abogados, Today’s Esquire, TechCrunch, The Hill, BuzzFeed, Venture Beat, The Independent, Fortune China, Yahoo!, ABA Journal, Law.com,The Boston Globe, and many other leading publications across the globe.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.