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

REUTERS/David Swanson/File Photo

Trolling with power: Elon Musk’s online antics are getting real

Businessman, entrepreneur, and increasingly, a disruptive force in geopolitics.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, SpaceX, and Tesla, has never shied away from controversial political posts, but over these last few weeks, his online trolling has had very real-world consequences.

Last week, he amplified posts on X that fueled racist riots in the United Kingdom and prophesized that civil war in the country was inevitable. Today, he is reportedly set to interview former President Donald Trump on X, a sitdown that will generate hundreds of headlines in a presidential cycle in which the interviewer, Musk, has unabashedly chosen a side.

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last month, Musk took to his app to endorse Trump’s candidacy – shattering the norm of self-declared neutrality by the leaders of social media platforms. (Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is not nearly as vocal about his political views). And in July, Musk announced the creation of a political action committee, America Pac, that would “mostly but not entirely” support the Republican Party.

The South African-born investor has also signaled his disapproval of Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, and even disseminated a deep fake video purportedly showing Harris calling herself “the ultimate diversity hire.” He also suspended the account “White Dudes for Harris” on X after it held a massive fundraising call that raised more than $4 millionfor her campaign.

Musk’s political interventions on X have been particularly controversial in the UK, where his inflammatory posts have been linked to recent civil unrest. British officials have criticized Musk for spreading misinformation, including false claims that the murderer of three British girls – which fueled protests and riots last week – was a Muslim migrant. During the riots, “super sharers,” or accounts like Elon Musk’s with large followings, acted as “nodes” for disseminating this lie through their interaction with the far-right content.

Musk is also responsible for relaxing the content moderation guidelines on the site and reinstating many far-right accounts that acted as super-sharers of misinformation. For example, he unbanned Tommy Robinson, a fringe and four-times-jailed extreme-right British activist, who went viral during the riots. He also promoted Ashlea Simon – co-founder of a white supremacist group — who claimed UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer planned to send British rioters to detention camps in the Falkland Islands.

Can he be regulated? As a result of the riots, many political leaders, including Starmer, EU commissioners, and US senators, have called for an inquiry into social media’s role in spreading incendiary disinformation.

According to Scott Bade, a geo-technology expert at Eurasia Group, Musk is increasingly becoming ageopolitical agent of chaos.” But Musk isn’t too powerful to regulate, says Bade. “The thing is, you’re not going to regulate Elon himself. You’re going to regulate the pieces of his empire.”

The Online Safety Act is already set to take effect in the UK at the end of the year and will require platforms to remove illegal content or be fined 10% of global annual turnover or £18 million, whichever is higher. In the wake of the riots, legislatures are considering tightening restrictions so companies can be sanctioned if they allow “legal but harmful” content such as misinformation to flourish.

“There is a clear consensus emerging in the aftermath of the riots that Musk and X are a problem, given the amount of misinformation, racial abuse, and incitement to violence that was spread on the platform,” says Eurasia Group Europe expert Mujtaba Rahman. “There will be a political and a policy response, but what shape that will take remains unclear for now.”

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill testifies before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in Washington.

REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

A bad case of “academentia” that needs to be cured

This week Claudine Gay, Sally Kornbluth, and M. Elizabeth Magill, the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, were brought before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to speak about the dangerous rise of antisemitism on campus, especially since the Oct. 7 attacks.

The Israel-Hamas war has triggered an alarming rise in antisemitic incidents on and off campus and also a rise in Islamophobic incidents. It was so bad that back on Nov. 14, President Joe Biden released an action plan to combat antisemitic and Islamophobic events on US campuses.

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Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke with naval commandos and fighters who took part in the combat mission in Gaza on Oct 29, 2023.

EYEPRESS via Reuters Connect

Bibi vows “Never Again is now”

As Israel ramped up its military campaign against Hamas this weekend in response to the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israeli soldiers were in the second stage of the war with ground troops entering Gaza. The goals, he said, are: “to destroy Hamas’ governing and military capabilities and to bring the hostages home.”

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Hearing the Christchurch Call
Hearing the Christchurch Call | Global Stage | GZERO Media

Hearing the Christchurch Call

After a terrorist attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, was live-streamed on the internet in 2019, the Christchurch Call was launched to counter the increasing weaponization of the internet and to ensure that emerging tech is harnessed for good.

Since its inception, the Christchurch Call has evolved to include more than 120 government and private sector stakeholders. The organization, pioneered by the French and New Zealand governments, will hold its next major summit at the Paris Peace Forum in November.

Dame Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand who led the response to the Christchurch attack; Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media; and Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft sat down with CNN’s Rahel Solomon for a Global Stage livestream on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. The event was hosted by GZERO Media in partnership with Microsoft.

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White nationalists give Nazi salutes while taking part in a swastika burning at an undisclosed location in the US state of Georgia.

REUTERS/Go Nakamura

Exclusive GZERO/Maru Poll: With hate speech rising, Americans want a crackdown on social media

The recent, unhinged anti-Jewish rants by musician and designer Kanye West are only the most prominent example of a wider phenomenon: antisemitism is rising in the United States.

Last year, attacks nationwide targeting Jewish people, property, or institutions rose by 35% to more than 2,100, according to the Anti-Defamation League. That’s the highest level since the ADL began tracking antisemitism more than 40 years ago.

This tracks a broader trend: Across 15 major US cities, hate crimes – that is, acts of violence that target a specific community – rose more than 20% last year, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. That was true for attacks on Blacks, LGBT, Latinos, Asians, and Whites.

Those are the facts, but how do Americans perceive things? Do they feel that hate is rising? And if so, what should be done about it? As part of GZERO’s new polling partnership with Maru Public Opinion, we asked them.

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Journalism on trial in the Philippines: interview with Maria Ressa
Journalism on Trial | Maria Ressa in Duterte's Philippines | GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

Journalism on trial in the Philippines: interview with Maria Ressa

Ian Bremmer talks to embattled Filipina journalist Maria Ressa, CEO of the online news agency Rappler. Ressa and her team have been involved in a years-long legal battle that challenges press freedoms and free speech in the Philippines, as President Rodrigo Duterte continues to assert authoritarian control in his nation. In the conversation Ressa details the ongoing court battles that have her facing up to 100 years in prison if convicted. She also discusses Duterte's militaristic approach to COVID-19 response, and then issues strong warnings about social media's role in promulgating hate speech globally.

Facebook allows "lies laced with anger and hate" to spread faster than facts, says journalist Maria Ressa
Facebook Spreads "Lies Laced with Anger and Hate" Faster Than Facts: Maria Ressa | GZERO WORLD

Facebook allows "lies laced with anger and hate" to spread faster than facts, says journalist Maria Ressa

In a new interview with Ian Bremmer for GZERO World, embattled Filipina journalist and CEO Maria Ressa issues strong warnings about social media companies, and Facebook in particular, for their inability or unwillingness to control hate speech online. Ressa, who runs the online news site Rappler, has been involved in a prolonged legal battle in the Philippines that threatens press freedom and free speech in that nation.

The fight has been fueled, she says, by a weaponization of social media."Facebook and other social media platforms allow lies laced with anger and hate to spread faster and further than facts, which are really boring," she says.

The conversation, part of the latest episode of GZERO World, also focuses on her ongoing case and how, she says, President Rodrigo Duterte has used the COVID-19 pandemic to further his authoritarian agenda in the Philippines. The episode begins airing nationally on US public television Friday, July 17. Check local listings.

Can Facebook's algorithm remove hate speech? Meltdown-proof nuclear reactors
Can Facebook's algorithm remove hate speech?; Meltdown-proof Nuclear Reactors | GZERO Media

Can Facebook's algorithm remove hate speech? Meltdown-proof nuclear reactors

Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief of WIRED, discusses technology industry news today:

Do some of the Facebook's best features, like the newsfeed algorithm or groups, make removing hate speech from the platform impossible?

No, they do not. But what they do do is make it a lot easier for hate speech to spread. A fundamental problem with Facebook are the incentives in the newsfeed algorithm and the structure of groups make it harder for Facebook to remove hate speech.

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