Elon Musk, CEO of X (formerly Twitter), has lauded his Community Notes feature as a tool to combat fake news. Yet, despite his public commitment to accuracy, Musk has been amplifying tweets from accounts that have garnered the most Community Notes corrections—many of which are right-wing, pro-Israeli, or anti-Muslim.
On October 29, 2023, Musk announced that posts corrected by Community Notes would no longer be eligible for revenue sharing on the platform. “The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism,” he declared. The concept of users fact-checking their peers to curb disinformation aimed to reduce engagement with false content. However, not only does this approach appear to have failed, but Musk’s own actions seem to undermine its effectiveness.
A research article published on November 8, 2024, analyzed whether the rollout of Community Notes had significantly curtailed disinformation on X. The findings were sobering: while the system increased the number of incorrect posts flagged with fact-checks, it had little impact on curbing the spread of falsehoods. By the time corrections were applied, the damage was often already done, with sensationalist posts continuing to dominate engagement metrics.
In defense of X’s community notes, this does not necessarily mean that the feature has not been received favourably. In fact, the choice of Meta to recently adopt this approach to “combating disinformation” is a testament to its superiority to prior compared to traditional fact-checking methods.
While the frequency of Community Notes on a given account should not be the sole metric for evaluating its reliability, it does offer insight into how often inaccuracies are posted. What raises concern, however, is that many of the accounts most frequently corrected by Community Notes continue to receive amplification from Elon Musk himself.
Accounts like Visegrad24, End Wokeness, Ian Miles Chong and Wall Street Mav—among the most community-noted on X—are regularly retweeted or engaged with by Musk. These accounts share common traits: a distinct political slant, the promotion of pro-Israel narratives, rhetoric about the so-called “culture war,” and anti-immigrant sentiments. Musk’s interaction with these accounts not only undermines the ethos of Community Notes but calls into question the platform’s commitment to curbing disinformation when its CEO actively engages with the very sources that are most frequently flagged for inaccuracies.
When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as X, the platform underwent an unmistakable political shift. Right-wing accounts saw a rapid increase in followers, while those linked to the Democratic Party experienced notable losses. Initially, these changes were largely attributed to a combination of liberal users leaving the platform and the restoration of previously banned accounts. Yet as time has gone on, it has become increasingly clear that the shift reflects a deliberate decision in how Musk manages the platform.
Since October 7, 2023, hundreds of accounts sharing pro-Palestinian views have been suspended. While some of these accounts were later restored, many remain banned. In contrast, pro-Israeli accounts, even those with histories of racist remarks or incitement, have faced no similar scrutiny.
Musk further escalated tensions by threatening to ban accounts using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” claiming it was a call to genocide. This move appeared to echo the narrative of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who previously promoted this interpretation, even though the phrase is historically linked to Netanyahu’s own Likud Party. Musk’s relationship with Netanyahu, underscored by his attendance at the Prime Minister’s controversial address to the U.S. Congress in 2023, has raised questions about the platform’s commitment to neutrality under Musk’s leadership.
Beyond his attempts to stifle certain kinds of speech, Musk’s regular interaction with and promotion of accounts frequently flagged by Community Notes undermines the effectiveness of the fact-checking tool. One prominent example is Visegrad24, an account that has faced numerous scandals, particularly for its role in spreading Zionist propaganda during the Gaza war. Following the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, Visegrad24 quickly rose to prominence as the most influential social media page covering the Gaza-Israel conflict.
Visegrad24 has been embroiled in numerous disinformation controversies. Among the most notable was its promotion of the widely discredited claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 Israeli babies. Beyond this, the account engaged in calculated distortions, such as misrepresenting a video of Israeli comedian Yoni Sharon condemning Hamas, framing it as though the speaker were Palestinian. Similarly, it manipulated footage captured by Palestinian journalist Motaz Azaiza, which depicted Israeli forces firing on civilians, falsely presenting it as evidence of Hamas targeting those same individuals.
Other prominent right-wing accounts frequently interacted with by Musk include EndWokeness, Visegrad24 and RadioGenoa. Notable, those same accounts promoted the egregious lie that a Palestinian baby killed in an Israeli airstrike was a doll, a claim that the Jerusalem Post would later publish before eventually taking it down.
Feature photo | Elon Musk speaks at President-elect Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again Victory Rally at Capital One Arena,” on Jan. 19, 2025 in Washington, DC. Michael Nigro | AP
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47