Elon Musk has objected to an article by The Associated Press alleging that “false claims of a stolen election thrive unchecked on Twitter” even though Musk promised that tweets making such claims would be “corrected,” with the Twitter chief calling on the media outlet to back up its assertion with data or retract the piece.
The article, published by AP on May 18, cites an interview earlier in the week on CNBC in which Musk pledged that users making false claims of stolen elections on Twitter “will be corrected, 100 percent.”
Musk was responding to a question by the interviewer about claims made by Twitter users that the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen,” and whether such claims would end up tagged with a community note or would face other actions.
“To be clear, I don’t think it was a stolen election,” Musk replied, before adding that he believes there was some election fraud in 2020.
“By the same token, if somebody is going to say that there is never any election fraud anywhere, this is obviously false. If 100 million people vote, the probability that the fraud is zero—is zero,” Musk added.
Musk went on to say that it’s important to strike a balance in discussions around election integrity by acknowledging that there’s going to be a non-zero amount of fraud without claiming that “the fraud was sufficient to change the outcome.”
The interviewer then pressed Musk whether “you are going to let people say that on Twitter,” referring to claims that the election was stolen.
“They will be corrected, 100 percent,” Musk said in the interview.
In its article, the Associated Press claimed that, since former President Donald Trump held a town hall on CNN in which he reiterated his claims that the election was rigged, many claims of a stolen election have proliferated on Twitter.
By Tom Ozimek
