Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Elon Musk’s following on X has nearly doubled since his purchase of the social media platform less than two years ago, handing the billionaire a public megaphone to broadcast views that are frequently right-leaning and fomenting misinformation. It took the billionaire, who now has 194mn followers, seven months to overtake former US president Barack Obama, at 132mn, as the most-followed person on X after buying the site formerly known as Twitter for $44bn in October 2022.“It’s hard to match that scale,” said Marc Owen Jones, a researcher at Northwestern University in Qatar. Musk is “a real bridge between communities and is in a position to mainstream far-right politics”.X is under scrutiny after the worst riots experienced in the UK since 2011 were blamed, in part, on misinformation that spread on the platform. In addition to cutting back the site’s moderation capabilities and loosening its policies, X’s owner has used his own account to post unfounded claims about the UK’s handling of the rioting and promoted some of the far-right figures blamed for agitating the violence.The self-described “free-speech absolutist” has in recent weeks posted everything from jibes at Sir Keir Starmer, UK prime minister, to a deepfake of US vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Musk has interacted with a host of far-right accounts including English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson, offering what researchers called a “personal algorithm booster” to their content. Independent fact-checkers have debunked at least 50 of Musk’s posts this year about the US election, messages that collectively amassed more than 1.2bn views on the platform, analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found.None of the posts identified by the think-tank had been flagged with a “community note”, the user-generated fact-checks introduced by Musk to tackle the deluge of misinformation that appeared after the platform’s moderation and safety teams were slashed. Musk’s repost in July of synthetic video, or deepfake, of a Kamala Harris campaign advert — in which the vice-president appears to call herself “the ultimate diversity hire” — has been seen 135.4mn times, according to X.He last week shared, and then deleted, a fake image designed to look like an article from The Telegraph, a British newspaper, claiming that the UK was planning to set up “detainment camps” in the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic for rioters. Musk’s interactions on X have also boosted smaller far-right accounts. When the billionaire replies to another user’s post, many of his millions of followers are then displayed the original content — even if they do not follow the account that first posted it.Engagement from Musk has in recent weeks amplified the visibility of incendiary posts from a host of far-right users including Robinson, whose legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, as well as rightwing accounts “Libs of TikTok” and “End Wokeness”, and anti-Muslim account “Europe Invasion”. Retweets of a post by rightwing commentator Ashley St Clair — who shared a video originally uploaded by Robinson — accelerated sixfold in the hour following a provocative reply to the post from Musk. A spokesperson for Starmer said there was “no justification” for Musk’s reply that “civil war is inevitable” days into rioting in cities and towns across the UK. Musk’s interaction with the post meant that the video was seen by a new audience of users, including many who probably would not otherwise have seen or interacted with the network of rightwing accounts that originally promoted it, according to Qatar-based researcher Jones.“There are clusters of these ‘anti-woke’ accounts, but they’re often fairly isolated,” he said. “Musk brings this content to a different kind of user.” Musk’s use of the hashtag #TwoTierKeir, which reflected unfounded allegations that the UK was favouring minorities over white rioters, prompted a similar jump in the visibility and spread of the phrase on X. The hashtag had previously been used by rightwing commentators including Robinson and Reclaim party leader Laurence Fox. But its popularity had begun to fade before Musk promoted it to a wider audience on August 6. Neither X nor Musk responded to a request for comment. Additional reporting by Amy Borrett in London
