Musk's misleading election posts viewed 1.2 billion times: study

False or misleading U.S. election claims posted on X by Elon Musk have amassed nearly 1.2 billion views this year, a watchdog reported Thursday, highlighting the billionaire's potential influence on the highly polarized White House race.

Ahead of the November election, researchers have raised alarm that X, formerly Twitter, is a hotbed of political misinformation.

They have also flagged that Musk, who purchased the platform in 2022 and is a vocal backer of Donald Trump, appears to be swaying voters by spreading falsehoods on his personal account.

Researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) identified 50 posts since January by Musk –- who has more than 193 million followers on the social media site -- with election claims debunked by independent fact-checkers.

None of the posts displayed a "Community Note," a crowd-sourced moderation tool that X has promoted as the way for users to add context to posts, CCDH said, raising questions about its effectiveness to combat falsehoods.

"Elon Musk is abusing his privileged position as owner of a... politically influential social media platform to sow disinformation that generates discord and distrust," warned CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed.

"The lack of Community Notes on these posts shows that his business is failing woefully to contain the kind of algorithmically-boosted incitement that we all know can lead to real-world violence."

The posts analyzed by CCDH carried widely debunked claims, such as that Democrats are encouraging illegal migration with the aim of "importing voters" or that the election is vulnerable to fraud. Both claims amassed hundreds of millions of views.

Last week, Musk faced a firehose of criticism for sharing with his followers an AI deepfake video featuring Trump's Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

In it, a voiceover mimicking Harris calls President Joe Biden senile before declaring that she does not "know the first thing about running the country."

The video, viewed by millions, carried no indication that it was parody -- save for a laughing emoji. Only later did Musk clarify that the video was meant as satire.

"Musk behaves as if he is beyond reproach despite growing evidence of the harmful role he is personally playing to fuel disinformation and division ahead of the US elections," Nora Benavidez, from the advocacy group Free Press Action Fund, told AFP.

"As his behavior edges closer to election interference, it's up to others -- the public, regulatory agencies and advertisers -- to hold him accountable for his anti-democratic behavior."

Musk, who purchased the platform in 2022 for $44 billion, is facing growing scrutiny over his potential influence on voters.

On Monday, a bipartisan group of five US secretaries of state sent an open letter to Musk, urging him to fix X's AI chatbot known as Grok after it produced election misinformation.

Hours after Biden stepped down from the presidential race last month and endorsed Harris as the Democratic nominee, Grok churned out false information about ballot deadlines, which was amplified by other platforms.

X -- which also faced criticism for stoking tensions during recent far-right riots across England -- has gutted trust and safety teams and scaled back content moderation efforts once used to tame misinformation, making it what researchers call a haven for disinformation.

X did not respond to an AFP request for comment.