Shooting conspiracies trend on X as Musk endorses Trump

Jul 14, 2024 07:55 AM - 4 months ago 91172

Conspiracy theories astir nan shooting astatine a Trump rally began surfacing connected X soon aft nan news collapsed this afternoon, pinch nan level promoting topics including “#falseflag” and “staged” to users. X proprietor Elon Musk has staunchly advocated for “free speech” connected societal media platforms — which tin see misinformation for illustration nan above.

After nan shooting, Musk posted that he would “fully endorse” nan erstwhile president. Bloomberg reported yesterday that Musk donated to a ace PAC supporting Trump, giving a “sizable amount” to reelection efforts. Musk has taken connected progressively blimpish views successful caller years, promoting nan “great replacement” conspiracy theory and endorsing support for achromatic pride. His support adds to a increasing rank of powerful voices successful Silicon Valley that are promoting his campaign.

Other awesome platforms mostly seemed to debar promoting misinformation

On X, neither trending taxable astir nan shooting is flush pinch peculiarly robust aliases coherent conspiracies; clicking through, you’ll mostly find short posts from X users saying that nan shooting looks clone aliases is simply a stunt. (There is nary grounds of either.) But by placing nan subjects into X’s trending topics area, nan conspiracies are elevated to much people.

Other awesome societal media platforms seemed to beryllium handling nan business amended successful nan contiguous aftermath of nan shooting. YouTube surfaced news clips and mostly directed hunt results toward news reports and verified creators. Facebook’s hunt results chiefly pointed to news outlets; nan level removed its trending topics conception successful 2018 complete changeless complaints astir its curation. Threads occasionally displayed conspiracy-related posts atop its trending taxable for nan incident, but they didn’t look to aboveground consistently.

X did not return a petition for comment. An email to its property squad returned an auto-reply saying, “Busy now, please cheque backmost later.”

The institution seems to beryllium embracing its domiciled arsenic a halfway of discussion, though — accurate aliases otherwise. Even arsenic conspiracy subjects continued to trend, X’s charismatic relationship posted a short statement this evening saying simply, “global municipality square.”