Musk is a disaster

The following advertisement from Free Press Action has been sent to you via Mother Jones' email list. Mother Jones is a nonprofit, and most of our budget comes from readers like you, but revenue from advertisers helps us produce more of the hard-hitting journalism you expect. We never disclose your information to an advertiser. Mother Jones does not endorse any candidate, political organization, commercial product, or service, and the views expressed in this email do not constitute any endorsement or recommendation by Mother Jones. [Free Press Action]( Dear Mother Jones Reader, Breaking news in the wild world of Twitter: Five secretaries of state are warning that the platform’s AI chatbot produced and spread misinformation about ballot deadlines to millions of users for more than a week.1 This comes on the heels of Musk himself spreading election disinformation late last month when he shared a deepfake video mocking Vice President Kamala Harris — without noting it was a parody. The post seemed to clearly violate Twitter’s rules against synthetic and manipulated media. These are clear examples of Musk setting and then ignoring the rules of the road — because he bought the road. [Add your name to our petition urging Twitter to protect its users and our democracy from the toxic spread of disinformation](. [ADD MY NAME]( Musk has a well-documented history of promoting horrific and bigoted viewpoints. He’s previously amplified claims that Europeans have “superior biology.” He’s made jokes about political violence. And it sure seems like he just kicked accounts off his platform when they raised too much money for a candidate he dislikes. That Twitter is so inundated with extremism and lies is a natural result of Musk’s decision to lay off most of the company’s trust and safety team, gut the platform’s content-moderation rules and reinstate thousands of accounts belonging to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, misogynists and other hateful people. With few left at the company to vet questionable content, posts are often left unchecked to spread like wildfire. And while it’s not just Twitter — Meta and YouTube have also failed to adequately and swiftly remove disinformation — Twitter most shows us the disastrous human implications that come from abandoned platform-integrity commitments. There’s a lot Twitter can do to make things right ahead of November — from labeling AI-generated political content to reducing the visibility and easy distribution of potentially violative election-related content that users have flagged. Every day counts and platforms can and should immediately correct course. But we’re running out of time. [Add your name to our petition calling on Twitter to take real action to protect users from disinformation and hate ahead of November.]( Thank you for taking action on this urgent issue, Nora and the rest of us at Free Press Action [freepressaction.org]( 1. “Musk's AI Chatbot Spread Election Misinformation, Secretaries of State Say,” Axios, Aug. 5, 2024 Free Press Action PO Box 60238 Florence, MA 01062 [Mother Jones]( Mother Jones and its nonprofit publisher, The Center for Investigative Reporting, do not endorse any political candidate, political organization, commercial product, process, or service, and the views expressed in this communication do not constitute an endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by Mother Jones. This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755