Reuters: With U.S. midterms ahead, Musk’s Twitter takeover raises fear of misinformation wave

Oct 28 (Reuters) – With the U.S. midterm elections less than two weeks away, Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter could unleash a fresh wave of election misinformation just as voters are casting ballots that will determine control of Congress for the next two years, political and media experts say.

Musk, the CEO of electric car maker Tesla, says he is a free speech “absolutist” and has vowed to loosen the reins on chatter within the social media app, which in recent years had striven to limit toxic content it viewed as dangerously false or discriminatory even as its global influence has widened.

Musk sought to address fears on Thursday, telling Twitter advertisers that the platform “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” On Friday, the entrepreneur announced he would form a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.”

But Musk has voiced skepticism about the site’s permanent bans of figures such as former President Donald Trump, who lost his account – and its nearly 90 million followers – shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Trump had used his account to assert falsely that the 2020 election was stolen from him. …

Critics, however, have warned that the site has also helped spread both misinformation – inaccurate or misleading information – and disinformation – purposefully false information – that undermines democratic principles and offers foreign actors an avenue for meddling.

“(Musk’s acquisition) could certainly create a much bigger pathway for disinformation agents to spread harmful information on the platform,” said Yosef Getachew, the director of the media and democracy program at Common Cause, the nonpartisan public interest organization.

“Content moderation policies are only effective if there are people there to enforce them and systems in place to ensure they are being enforced. If those rules are going to be out the window, that is going to be incredibly harmful.”