Elon Musk finally admits in his own words that he's an alt-right racist bigot.

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How an Elon Musk PAC is using voter data to help Trump beat Harris in 2024 election​


Published Fri, Aug 2 20249:56 AM EDTUpdated 2 Hours Ago

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Brian Schwartz@schwartzbCNBC

Key Points


  • Tesla boss Elon Musk and other tech executives are funding a social media ad blitz to support the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

  • The ads come as Musk uses his account on X, the social media platform he owns, to back the Republican nominee over the de facto Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

  • Musk’s America PAC is collecting data in more than a half-dozen swing states that could determine the outcome of the 2024 election.

In this article

Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X speaks during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 6, 2024.  REUTERS/David Swanson


Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X speaks during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 6, 2024.

David Swanson | Reuters

If a voter in Michigan performs a search on Google
, a somewhat shocking ad might pop up.

The ad shows a young man lying in bed late at night when someone else texts him, “Hey you need to vote,” and then sends the man a video of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The man can hear the gunshots and people screaming in the background.

As Trump is rushed off stage with blood pouring down his face, the man watching the video types in response, “This is out of control. How do I start?”

The ad then displays a website for a group called America PAC.

The website says it will help the viewer register to vote. But once a user clicks “Register to Vote,” the experience he or she will have can be very different, depending on where they live.

If a user lives in a state that is not considered competitive in the presidential election, like California or Wyoming for example, they’ll be prompted to enter their email addresses and zip code and then directed quickly to a voter registration page for their state, or back to the original sign up section.

But for users who enter a zip code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cell phone number, and age.

If they agree to submit all that, the system still does not steer them to a voter registration page. Instead, it shows them a “thank you” page.

So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.

Specifically, a political action committee created by Tesla

CEO Elon Musk, one aimed at giving the Republican presidential nominee Trump an advantage in his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, the de facto Democratic nominee.

“I have created a PAC, or a super PAC ... the America PAC,” Musk said in a recent interview.

Musk also owns the social media platform X, and has a net worth of over $235 billion, according to Forbes.

The combination of owning a social media company that gives him an enormous platform to push his political views, and creating a PAC with effectively unlimited resources, has made Musk, for the first time, a major force in an American presidential election.

The America PAC has spent over $800,000 since early July on digital ads that target voters in the key battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to AdImpact.

The ads appeared on Facebook, Instagram and Google through YouTube, and they all encouraged people to register to vote at America PAC’s website.

The PAC’s effort to collect information from people using the idea of “voter registration” is a critical piece to its plan to make personal contact with these voters.

“America PAC is focusing on door-to-door canvassing in support of Trump,” said Brendan Fischer, a deputy executive director at campaign finance watchdog Documented.

“I think it is safe to assume that the voter data gathered through these digital appeals are going to inform America PAC’s canvassing and other political activities,” he added.

Fischer pointed to the group’s privacy policy which says they can use the data they’ve collected on “other activities and/or fundraising campaigns.”

Since June, America PAC has spent over $21 million on canvassing, digital media, text message services and phone calls, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

The PAC’s website offers no indication one way or another what the group’s political leaning is. But in its federal filings, the group discloses that all of its work is designed to either help Trump or hurt his opponent.

Fischer said he has seen some other PACs try to use a “register to vote” message to gather people’s data.

But what is unique about America PAC’s project is who is backing it and the timing of its creation.

In most cases, super PACs are not allowed to directly coordinate the ads they pay for with the campaign. But this spring, regulators ruled that door-to-door canvassing falls outside the scope of the ban because, unlike an ad, it is a person-to-person exchange.

“What makes America PAC more unique: it is a billionaire-backed super PAC focused on door-to-door canvassing, which it can conduct in coordination with a presidential campaign,” Fischer said. “Thanks to a recent FEC advisory opinion, America PAC may legally coordinate its canvassing activities with the Trump campaign — meaning, among other things, that the Trump campaign may provide America PAC with the literature and scripts to make sure their efforts are consistent.”

“Coordination is incredibly important: it ensures that the PAC’s activities are maximally beneficial to the campaign, and frees up the campaign’s own funds for other uses,” he said. “I suspect that the PAC’s ability to coordinate its data-driven canvassing activities with the Trump campaign made it very appealing for donors.”

Longtime Republican strategists Phil Cox, Generra Peck and Dave Rexrode are among those now guiding the PAC after a shake-up in mid-July, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. This person was granted anonymity to speak freely about a private matter.

The change suggests there could be a shift in tactics by the PAC come November. The New York Times first reported on the moves.

Musk is not the only tech executive backing this effort.

The America PAC raised over $8 million between April 1 and June 30, according to FEC records. It has received donations from veteran investor Doug Leone, cryptocurrency investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and a company run by longtime venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, according to FEC records.

Lonsdale, a co-founder of the software company Palantir, is also a leader of the PAC, and “serves as a political confidant to” Musk, according to The New York Times.

The records do not yet list Musk as a donor. He recently said on X that he is “making some donations to America PAC,” but did not say how much. The PAC is not required to file a third-quarter report until Oct. 15, the first time that Musk’s name could be listed as a donor.

A spokesman for America PAC declined to comment. Musk did not return emails seeking comment.

The PAC’s ads that have aired on social media platforms also mirror a larger message that Musk pushes out to his 191 million followers on X several times a day: The notion that America is in chaos and voting for Trump over Harris is the only way out.

These PACs have often functioned as the alter ego of whatever billionaire is behind them,” said Daniel Weiner, a director of the Brennan Center’s elections and government program.

Experts say Musk’s ownership of X and the lack of any real guardrails around how he uses it, is a sign the platform could be used by the Tesla boss as a political weapon to take on Harris and Democrats at large with fewer than 100 days left until Election Day.

“I’d say that it is somewhat concerning that the owner of one of the most important social media platforms is openly partisan (rooting for one of the candidates) and is using his platform ... as a vehicle for pursuing his openly partisan ends,” said Matthew Baum, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, whose research includes studying misinformation.

Baum said such ownership of a social media company like X leaves open the possibility of “capture of a major platform by a partisan actor, who would then be largely free to use the platform as they see fit, regardless of the potential negative social or political consequences.”

“There is a concern that Musk is weaponizing that platform to help his preferred candidate” in Trump, said Weiner.
 

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Labour MPs begin quitting X over ‘hate and disinformation’​


Exclusive: MPs leaving platform or scaling back use over its ‘deterioration’ under Elon Musk’s ownership

Eleni Courea Political correspondent

Mon 12 Aug 2024 15.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 12 Aug 2024 16.27 EDT
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One Labour MP accused Elon Musk of turning X into ‘a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups’. Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPA

Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm over the platform, with one saying Elon Musk had turned it into “a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups”.

Over the weekend, newly elected MPs took to WhatsApp groups to raise growing concerns about the role X played in the spread of misinformation amid the far-right-led riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland.

Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives, including Threads, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.

Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, has been embroiled in a public spat with Keir Starmer since the tech billionaire suggested that the riots meant “civil war is inevitable” in the UK. Musk has been criticised for failing to crack down on misinformation on the platform and for sharing fake news himself.

In an article for the Guardian on Monday, a former Twitter executive, Bruce Daisley, said Musk should face personal sanctions and even an arrest warrant if he continues to stir up public disorder online.

Over the weekend, Jess Phillips, a Home Office minister who has more than 700,000 followers on X, said she wanted to scale back her use of the platform as it had become a “bit despotic” and was “a place of misery now”.

A government minister also told the Guardian they had reduced their posts on X over the summer and that Musk’s actions had made them “very reluctant to return”.

Musk – who has cast himself as a proponent of free speech, reinstating to X figures including Donald Trump and the far-right activist Tommy Robinson – is due to conduct an interview with Trump on X on Monday night .

Josh Simons, the Labour MP for Makerfield, said he was looking into alternative platforms such as Bluesky. “What matters about Musk is not only what he said, but how he changed X’s algorithms,” he said. “He’s turned X into a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups seeking to corrupt our public sphere. Nobody should have that power.

“A new generation of legislators are flexing their muscles, people who’ve grown up understanding the power of these platforms. By talking down Britain, Musk has placed X firmly in our sights.”

Lewis Atkinson, the Labour MP for Sunderland Central, has begun collating a list of MPs from his party who use Threads and said that “any platform that has lots of hate and disinformation is not very appealing to use”.

“I’ve noticed in recent weeks some people moving away from X because of their experiences there, so I’ve expanded where I’m posting to include some X alternatives – Threads and BlueSky,” he said.

“I’ve been pleased to find others I know there, including other Labour MPs; by my count 28 now using Threads. Using multiple platforms gives constituents and journalists a choice of what they use. I don’t plan to quit X, but I don’t see why it (or any platform) should have a monopoly on politicians posting.”

Jo Platt, the Labour MP for Leigh, quit X before the general election after witnessing the “deterioration” of the platform and is now a Threads user.

“I used to love it. I was on it since 2009,” Platt said. “That deterioration of it has just happened quite quickly over the past few years and even more so now.” She cited “the misinformation and disinformation that you see on there, without it being challenged, and you know that it’s not going to be removed”.

Far right-led unrest was whipped up by activists online who falsely claimed that a Muslim asylum-seeker was behind a stabbing attack that left three children dead in Southport two weeks ago.

On Monday, Downing Street indicated that social media companies could face stronger regulation if they failed to take robust action against disinformation on their platforms. Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, met social media executives last week and another meeting is expected this week.

“We’re very clear that social media companies have a responsibility for ensuring that there is no safe place for hatred and illegality on their platforms,” the prime minister’s spokesperson said.

“Our immediate response has been responding to the disorder and working with police. But as [Starmer] said last week, he does agree that we’re going to need to look more broadly at social media after this disorder.”

She said ministers were focused on implementing the Online Safety Act as soon as possible.

On Monday, in response to a post by the rightwing Reform party leader, Nigel Farage, saying: “Keir Starmer poses the biggest threat to free speech we’ve seen in our history,” Musk replied: “True.”

The prime minister’s spokesperson said he would “disagree with that completely”, but stressed that Starmer would not enter a tit-for-tat spat with Musk.

In a string of posts over the past fortnight, Musk has repeatedly attacked the UK government, police and justice system. He has used the hashtag TwoTierKeir – a reference to allegations that police have treated some protesters more harshly than others – and has described the prison sentences handed to two far-right rioters as “messed up”.

But the prime minister’s spokesperson said the government had no plans to review its use of X and said: “With all of our communications, it’s important to make sure that we reach the broadest possible audience, and that is one of a number of channels that we use to ensure that we’re doing that.”
 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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That's a difficult question in 2022.
The line between a leftist and a liberal is blurring...
So has being a right-winger.

Am I a right-winger because I don't want kids to be taught about sexual orientation and pronouns and all that shyt?
Who's pushing that, is it the left or liberals? I don't think I know anymore.
I would have said it's liberals not leftists once upon a time, but it's hard to say now.
Liberal is a word meant to pertain to liberty
 

Amerikan Melanin

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How is there not a Twitter competitor up and running already??!!! There would be an overnight Expodus.
 

klientel

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How is there not a Twitter competitor up and running already??!!! There would be an overnight Expodus.
nope its not happening

there is no room for new social media platforms unless it has its own lane like Tik Tok. They tried it with threads and look how that turned out
 

Rice N Beans

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nope its not happening

there is no room for new social media platforms unless it has its own lane like Tik Tok. They tried it with threads and look how that turned out

I think Threads has its own worms being tied to Meta. The lame part of all this is little else but corpos like Meta have the advertisement power to pull people away from Twitter.

It would take something like this election cycle to host events on a competitor to get some numbers going. But trail blazing social media locations isn't something to spend time on when campaigning when you need to meet the widest audience. :yeshrug:
 

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X labeled an unflattering NPR story about Donald Trump as ‘unsafe’​


A spokesperson said the warning was a "false positive."​


karissa bell

Senior Editor

Updated Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 2:36 PM EDT·2 min read

8b2bb280-6623-11ef-9fff-33cdf676317d

X

X briefly discouraged users from viewing a link to an NPR story about Donald Trump's recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery, raising questions about whether the Elon Musk-owned platform is putting its thumb on the scale for the former president.

On Thursday, NPR reporter Stephen Fowler posted a link to a story in which he quoted an Army official who said that an employee at Arlington National Cemetery was “abruptly pushed aside” during an event attended by Trump and members of his campaign earlier this week. The outlet had previously reported that there was a “physical altercation” at the event with campaign staff over federal laws barring campaign activities at the cemetery.

Some users on X who attempted to click a link to the story were greeted with a warning message saying that X deemed that “this link may be unsafe.” It stated that it could be malicious, violent, spammy or otherwise violate the platform’s rules, but didn't explain why the link was flagged. Fowler posted a thread on X, each tweet of which contained a link to his story — the warning appeared to affect the first two instances of the link but not others, for reasons unknown. It’s highly unusual for such a warning to appear before a link to a mainstream website. Other links to NPR, as well as other coverage of Trump’s visit to Arlington, don’t appear to have such a label.

In a statement to an NPR reporter, an X spokesperson claimed the warning appeared due to a "false positive" and that it had been corrected. The company didn't explain further.

Notably, Musk has been a vocal supporter of Trump this election, and recently held a lengthy live streamed conversation with him on X. Musk has also publicly feuded with NPR in the past, adding a “state affiliated media” label to its account for several months last year. NPR hasn’t posted from its main account on X since the label was added last April.

Update August 29, 2024, 2:35 PM ET: This story was updated to add additional details from an X spokesperson and to indicate that the link is no longer labeled as "unsafe."
 

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Elon Musk is a ‘promoter of evil,’ EU rule-of-law chief says​

“I’m really scared by digital platforms in bad hands,” Věra Jourová tells POLITICO.

Free article usually reserved for subscribers

Milken Institute’s Global Conference Held In Beverly Hills


Elon Musk has been on a collision course with European officials, fighting regulators and governments on multiple fronts. | Apu Gomes/Getty Images

October 16, 2024 3:13 pm CET

By Sam Clark and Barbara Moens

BRUSSELS — Elon Musk, unlike other tech bosses, "is not able to recognize good and evil,” a European Union top official said Wednesday.

The multibillionaire tech mogul and boss of X, Tesla and SpaceX is amplifying hatred, outgoing European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová told POLITICO in an interview, calling him a “promoter of evil.”

Musk has been on a collision course with European officials, fighting regulators and governments on multiple fronts. The tech mogul bought Twitter in April 2022, rebranding it as X shortly after, and he has attracted criticism for his management of the platform, with European politicians and civil society saying he has allowed hate speech to fester on the site.
“We started to relativize evil, and he's helping it proactively. He's the promoter of evil,” Jourová said.

The Czech politician, who was the EU’s justice chief from 2014-2019 and has been in charge of “values and transparency” since 2019, has had regular contact with many of the world’s largest technology companies over the last decade on issues like privacy, disinformation and content moderation.

Big tech companies have “monstrous power in their hands,” Jourová said. “I'm really scared by digital platforms in bad hands."

X is “the main hub for spreading antisemitism now,” Jourová said, adding that she warned ministers from EU capitals on Tuesday to be vigilant to the possibility of online antisemitism spilling over into the real world.

“Now we are in the situation where the member states’ law enforcement powers have to protect the people who are under threat, under physical threat,” she said. “This is what I mean ... This new chapter, new intensity of antisemitism, where we don't see sufficient action from the side of the platforms.”

Jourová has never met Musk in person, but said that “even without this personal meeting, I would say that out of all the bosses I met, he is the only one who is not able to recognize good and evil.”

The EU’s former internal market chief Thierry Breton did meet Musk in California in 2022, and since clashed with him publicly over Musk’s approach to online content moderation.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

Regulation vs. innovation​


Jourová also dismissed the increasingly popular narrative that Brussels' overregulation has stifled tech innovation.

The EU passed a raft of digital legislation over the last five years, leading some of the world’s largest technology companies to argue that they cannot launch AI tools and other innovative products in the bloc because they don’t know how the new laws work together or how they will be enforced.

But innovation for innovation’s sake is not necessarily desirable, Jourová said: “We have to be sure that the innovations are developed to do good to people.”

She said she wondered why innovation was typically "described as something absolutely good, [and] regulations as something which is bad … It's not black and white."

Big tech companies’ vast profits should not be at the expense of Europeans, Jourová said — even if that means product-launch delays. “Nobody says that Google and others cannot introduce new technologies in Europe. Maybe, one, two months, half a year later than somewhere else, but we want to be sure,” she said.

Jourová led work on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a landmark privacy regime that went into force in 2018 and remains one of the EU’s most famous — and infamous — laws.

Though the EU recently passed the Artificial Intelligence Act, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, the GDPR often remains the main target of tech companies' ire, particularly because of how it is interpreted. The question of whether the law will need to be changed in the next five years is a key issue for incoming Commission tech chief Henna Virkkunen, Jourová said.

“I think in [terms of] GDPR, we will have to look again at how to better enforce under the principle of one continent, one law,” she said.

Jourová, who is leaving Brussels after 10 years at the Berlaymont, joked that she was returning to Prague as a “dissident,” given she left her own ANO party, which has turned more illiberal under former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš.

The return of the Euroskeptic Babiš, who is currently leading the polls ahead of next year's Czech election, would strengthen the illiberal forces in the EU, given Babiš’ ties to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Jourová dismissed rumors that she would start her own political movement to take on her former boss. Instead, she will return to her alma mater, Charles University in Prague, in a management and teaching role.
 

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1/21
@atrupar
Here's audio of Elon Musk saying during his telephone town hall that electing Trump will bring "temporary hardship"



https://video-t-2.twimg.com/ext_tw_...1138/pu/vid/avc1/512x368/GkSggXWNu8SnZXjs.mp4

2/21
@Sjacobs2020
One major problem. The "king of debt" isn't planning on reducing spending.

Trump's fiscal policy will increase the deficit by as much as $15 trillion. And now he wants to eliminate federal income tax?!

According to economists, only Harris' plan has the potential to reduce the deficit.



Ga17qixWAAAMLhA.png

Ga17x5BXoAELNQa.png


3/21
@Dog_House_Show
Under Trump’s economic policy it would be four years of extreme hardships.



4/21
@lachevron
_We're going to have to tighten our belts"

-The richest man in the world



5/21
@BeaReno
“Temporary hardship” for the rest of us, not for him.🤬🔥



6/21
@RexChapman
Good god.



7/21
@BadTrumpQuips
How about less hardship and more prosperity for all, like Democrats have historically delivered over Republicans.



Ga19504XcAAESxe.jpg


8/21
@danzu72
Elon has a fundamental misunderstanding of Americans that only someone not from America could have. We don't do government imposed hardship very well.



9/21
@bluepolitics_
But not for him….he’ll get the mother of all tax breaks.



10/21
@SusaEJordan
I think the American people had enough "temporary hardship" thanks to Donald Trump's only 4 years as POTUS & we don't want a replay.



11/21
@byajperez
Why does it feel like I’m selfish when I say things are going well now? Perfect? Hell no. People have struggled since this county was founded, especially those who weren’t white. The MAGA doom and gloom is maddening.



12/21
@BillVA123
Only for us common folk. The self-identified natural rulers like Trump, Musk and Theil will be comfortable. Welcome to American oligarchy.



13/21
@SuckerCarlson
Let me guess, Elon then continued by saying: "But it will be just like the Model 3, we'll kill it in the market. And then we'll delete parts and make it even better, because America is just like any other product."



14/21
@ACL80GFYS
Temporary as in 4 years temp?



15/21
@actingliketommy
They want to crash the economy, blame it on Biden, and buy all the real estate up for a fraction.



16/21
@TK_1992
So normal people suffer, so Elmo can get his, lol



17/21
@BlueSedition
Donald Trump destroyed the economy and left us struggling; then he begged his supporters to overturn the election and left them in prison. This man cares about nothing but himself.



18/21
@TellMeMoreFacts
🚨@elonmusk and The /search?q=#MAGA

“Legion of Groom” 👇🏻🤣💀



https://video-t-2.twimg.com/amplify_video/1850271167166181377/vid/avc1/746x720/Hp8zbmBFw9ZKO5Yt.mp4

19/21
@Sandfort_
Electing Harris would bring permanent hardship. Democrats seem unable to see this obvious fact..



Ga17byVWIAAWl2M.jpg


20/21
@DavidwithaView
Yes he won't be VP!

[Quoted tweet]
Wednesday, November 6, 2024⁩

Trumpf appoints Elon as head of space command


Ga27CizbAAAmPIR.jpg


21/21
@MJPalermo10
We have already been through hardship in Trumps last year with Covid. Biden helped us out of that, we are back to normal and frankly, we aren’t going back!




To post tweets in this format, more info here: https://www.thecoli.com/threads/tips-and-tricks-for-posting-the-coli-megathread.984734/post-52211196
 
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