Elon Musk is the most-followed user on X, and election misinformation he spreads on the platform oftentimes far-surpasses accurate information spread by government officials.
As Elon Musk continues to aggressively share conspiracy theories and misinformation about elections on X, election officials are fighting back.
But even as they are speaking out to try to counteract Musk, the owner of X since 2022, they’re being drowned out on a platform that seemingly favors falsities.
Corrections to Musk’s lies from election officials like Michigan County Clerk Barb Bynum, who regularly uses her 25,000-follower account to share accurate information about how elections work, have oftentimes received far less engagement on the platform.
“My microphone is significantly smaller than the owner of Twitter’s, but I still have to use my platform to correct mis- and disinformation, especially when it is about election administration and the integrity of our elections,” Bynum said in an interview with NBC News.
Does fact checking even work anymore? At this point it almost feels like a waste of time, and maybe even counterproductive.
Like, it doesn’t matter how hard I fact check things anymore. It doesn’t matter how many statistics I can pull out, or how simple and factual my response is.
People want to be wrong. Their mind is made up and their desire to have that opinion is unflinching. Fact checks might not even reach them in their corners of the internet. Telling someone who is choosing to be wrong that they are wrong will not do anything.
I honestly don’t know what to do instead, this seems like it is going to need something that is basically cult deprogramming.
I’d imagine it works for some people, just not the ones you’d want it to.
Fact checking will only work on people who care about facts, and those people aren’t the problem. Though stopping doing it won’t exactly help the situation either