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[ [link removed] ]Free Press Action
Friend,

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.

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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

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1. “Musk's AI Chatbot Spread Election Misinformation, Secretaries of State Say,” Axios, Aug. 5, 2024

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