The Washington Post reports:
As false information about the rapidly changing war between Gaza Strip militants and Israel proliferated on the social media platform X over the weekend, owner Elon Musk personally recommended that users follow accounts notorious for promoting lies.
“For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good,” Musk posted on the platform formerly called Twitter on Sunday morning to 150 million follower accounts. That post was viewed 11 million times in three hours, drawing thanks from those two accounts, before Musk deleted it.
Both were among the most important early spreaders of a false claim in May that there had been an explosion near the White House. The Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index briefly dropped 85 points before that story was debunked.
Mediaite reports:
Musk’s tweets were called out by a number of news observers who noted @WarMonitor’s history of pushing misinformation, calling Hamas “resistance fighters,” and using “Jew” as a slur. After many X users brought up the accounts’ past mistakes, Musk deleted his initial post and issued another imploring people to “please try stay as close to the truth as possible, even for stuff you don’t like.”
The guy Musk recommends for information on the Israel-Hamas escalation is an antisemitic account with a history of spreading misinformation https://t.co/S6iMX7yLNV pic.twitter.com/245LJbFYr1
— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) October 8, 2023
Elon Musk lauds this bigot as a good source of information, part Infiniti pic.twitter.com/n318hVaJaW
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 8, 2023
a few tweets from one of the accounts that Elon Musk just recommended as a good source for news https://t.co/IfC2aZvtVx pic.twitter.com/N3LooaxNU4
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) October 8, 2023
As false information about the rapidly changing war between Gaza Strip militants and Israel proliferated on the social media platform X over the weekend, owner Elon Musk personally recommended that users follow accounts notorious for promoting lies. https://t.co/YDfmVfIlPw
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 8, 2023