What do Musk and Zuckerberg have in common?

Friend,

In the last few weeks, hate and lies on social media have been spreading at an unparalleled speed. Our latest research shows that Elon Musk’s X and Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram are dramatically failing to counter hate, abuse, and disinformation.

Let’s start with Zuckerberg’s Instagram. We reported 1,000 abusive comments to the platform that targeted 5 Republican and 5 Democrat women candidates running for office in 2024.

A week later, Instagram had failed to act on 93% of these hateful comments. These included sexist and racist abuse, as well as rape and death threats.

One of their targets was Vice President and now the Democratic Party's presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Violence and abuse have no place in our politics. Instagram must enforce its guidelines and protect public officials.

On to Elon Musk’s X. The billionaire has not only transformed X into a cesspit of hate and lies where bad actors have the freedom to promote hateful claims and fuel real-world violence – but Musk is actively spreading false and misleading claims himself.

Only this month we showed:

Elon Musk posted false and misleading claims about the US election at least 50 times this year, reaching nearly 1.2 billion views on X. None of the posts displayed Community Notes. 

X amplified and profited from hate and disinformation that fueled the far-right riots in the UK:

We estimate that X made over £27K a day in the week following the UK’s Southport stabbings from ads near posts by far-right disinformation spreaders Andrew Tate, Laurence Fox, and others. These included ads for well-known brands like GlaxoSmithKline, the British Medical Association, and the International Olympic Committee.

Our analysis showed that far-right figure Tommy Robinson’s hateful and racist posts on X got over 434 million views in the week following the Southport attack.

Social media bosses care more about their pockets than people’s safety. Together, we will keep exposing their failures and fighting for a better internet.

Follow us on social media to keep up to date with our latest findings and share our research with your friends and family.

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Best wishes,

The CCDH Team

PS. We need your support to keep investigating social media platforms and exposing their bosses’ failures. Please donate today.

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