Elon Musk is not happy with Community Notes, the crowdsourced fact-checking program that adds notes to correct misinformation on his social media platform X. And the billionaire says he’s now going to “fix” Community Notes so that it agrees with him, claiming without evidence that it’s being manipulated by governments and the media.
“Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media. Working to fix this,” Musk tweeted Thursday.
Why is Musk upset? It looks like the billionaire doesn’t like notes that have appeared under tweets about Ukraine in recent days, which are fact-checking several lies being spread by the U.S. government. President Donald Trump has cozied up to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, alarming European allies, and has said a number of false things about Ukraine and the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump, for instance, called Zelenskyy a “dictator” in a post to Truth Social on Wednesday and has repeatedly suggested this week that Ukraine was the one to actually start the war. In reality, Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022 without provocation and continues to occupy parts of the country while waging war against the Ukrainian people.
Trump has also claimed that Zelenskyy has just a 4% approval rating among his own people, something he said twice on Wednesday but simply isn’t true. As CNN notes, a poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology says 57% of Ukrainians trust their president. Technically, Ukraine polls don’t ask about “approval” but trust. It’s not clear where Trump heard the 4% number.
But Musk doesn’t like anyone pointing out stuff like this in Community Notes, going on a tirade Thursday about how the Ukrainian president isn’t actually popular.
“It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!! If Zelensky was actually loved by the people of Ukraine, he would hold an election,” Musk said.
The reason Ukraine hasn’t held any elections since the start of the war is that hundreds of thousands of people are fighting and dying, a fact that some MAGA conservatives don’t think is sufficient.
“He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of ALL Ukrainian media, so he canceled the election,” Musk continued. “In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine, which is why he has refused to hold an election. I challenge Zelensky to hold an election and refute this. He will not.”
Musk went on to write that President Trump is, “right to ignore him and solve for peace independent of the disgusting, massive graft machine feeding off the dead bodies of Ukrainian soldiers.”
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