Musk Concerned State Actors Manipulating Community Notes On X

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is under attack by state actors and he knows it. As a self-described “free speech absolutist” he is in direct opposition to forces in Washington that want nothing more than to control the public discourse.

Musk recently expressed his concerns that government forces are manipulating the popular Community Notes feature on X, formerly Twitter. 

This addition allows users to add corrections or highlight misinformation contained in posts. That, however, runs counter to the left-wing desire to suppress conservative speech instead of winning arguments in the marketplace of ideas. 

If anyone should know about the malign influence of state actors on social media, it is Musk. The reason he put his neck out and purchased X to begin with was the overwhelming control the government was exercising over the “virtual town square.”

In this instance, he said that diligence is necessary to protect the integrity of information platforms.

Musk explained, “No system is perfect. Perfection would be an absurd and foolish standard.” But even with the imperfections inherent with all social media, the question is how many errors are present and how quickly are they corrected.

Community Notes has proven to be effective, but it is far from immune to manipulation by government agencies or private actors. Many want nothing more than to control the discourse and influence public opinion toward their goals.

To incentivize accuracy, Musk recently enacted a policy of demonetizing posts that are corrected through Community Notes. In late October, he announced that “any posts that are corrected by Community Notes become ineligible for revenue share.”

This followed criticism of postings spreading dubious claims about the Israel-Hamas war.

Musk touted the change as a way to promote “accuracy over sensationalism.” 

These are tough times for X. A Reuters report noted that monthly ad revenue for the platform has plummeted by 55% year-over-year since Musk’s $44 billion acquisition.

There is a concerted effort among leftist organizations to scare major advertisers away from X. These groups find incidents of controversial speech and use them to convince firms that their products will be damaged by sharing space with these postings on the free speech platform.