Echoes of Power: Elon Musk, Misinformation, and the Fragility of Democratic Discourse

This post is part of a series of contributor perspectives and analyses called "The Coming Age of Tech Trillionaires and the Challenge to Democracy." Learn more about the call for contributions here, and read other pieces in the series as they are published here.

In the years since social media became a central infrastructure for news, politics, and public life, few moments have shaken its foundations quite like Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) in late 2022. What exactly changed is still being debated—whether it was a structural collapse of content moderation, a philosophical shift toward “free speech absolutism,” or simply the unchecked centralization of power in one individual’s hands. But the shifts were immediate and hard to ignore. Musk laid off thousands, disbanded trust and safety teams, and brought back tens of thousands of previously suspended accounts, including Donald Trump’s. The platform’s mood began to shift—its tone looser, its rules blurrier, its boundaries harder to define. For many journalists, researchers, and civil society groups, something fundamental felt altered. Moderation gave way to momentum. The platform’s fragile legitimacy gave way to vibes. And as the dust settled, X began to resemble something more volatile: a stage for global polarization, a space where slacktivism thrives, and a discursive playground where exaggeration can morph into misinformation—fast.

By 2024, Musk had transformed from tech magnate to one-man narrative engine—using X not only as a stage for provocation but as an algorithmic megaphone for ideological signaling. He amplified conspiracy theories, mocked institutional safeguards, and reshaped media routines by inserting himself—sarcastically or otherwise—into nearly every major political controversy. His posts didn’t need to be truthful; they needed to be viral. Musk’s 220 million followers (and an algorithm tweaked in his favor) helped ensure that his content often reached more users than traditional media outlets. Stories tied to his posts—such as his mockery of President Biden’s “no one is above the law” tweet after the Hunter Biden pardon—received broad secondary amplification through media coverage, fueling laughter reactions, outrage, and widespread engagement far beyond their original intent.

In this essay, I investigate how Musk’s communicative power—often wielded through irony, misinformation, or curated outrage—operates as a form of informal governance. I analyzed 24 fact-checked claims from 2024—chosen from a larger set of 50—using data from Snopes, PolitiFact, and FactCheck.org. These examples help us understand what Musk said, how people reacted, and how those claims spread. While this dataset doesn’t cover everything Musk said or did, it gives a clear view into some of the most influential stories that shaped political conversations in 2024. I analyze engagement metrics and rhetorical patterns to understand how Musk’s voice exploits platform design, political polarization, and regulatory loopholes. Beyond the question of “Is it true?” I ask: What makes it believable? And what makes it spread?

At stake here is more than Elon Musk’s personal brand. As he moves between CEO, influencer, and political actor, he models a new kind of digital authority—already echoed by right-wing movements and authoritarian figures worldwide. His influence doesn’t just command attention; it shapes the conditions under which belief is formed. This creates fertile ground for the spread of disinformation—streamlined, viral, and rarely questioned. When such power to shape narratives is held by someone with deep technological, economic, and political ties to the US government, the risks intensify. Public discourse can tilt toward uncertainty, performative politics, and mass deception. As amplification replaces dialogue, speech becomes signaling, and audiences become entirely passive. Musk moves across institutional terrains, bending the logic of each to fit the grammar of virality.

From fact checks to narrative patterns

I started by putting together a hand-picked set of fact-checked claims about Elon Musk that spread during 2024. These came from trusted sources like Snopes, PolitiFact, and FactCheck.org. For each claim, I noted whether it was true or false, and whether Musk made the claim himself, helped spread it, or wasn’t involved at all.

From there, I organized the data into thematic categories and analyzed patterns across tone, rhetoric, and narrative structure. For claims where Musk posted directly on X, I also collected publicly available engagement metrics—likes, replies, reposts, bookmarks, and views—and calculated both follower-based and view-based engagement rates (ER). This provided a quantitative lens to understand which kinds of Musk-related claims gained the most traction, and why.

To better understand the structure of Musk-related misinformation, I began with a hand-coded dataset of around 50 fact-checked claims from 2024. However, many were duplicates or unrelated to Musk’s actual communication. Some appeared in search results for his name but had no substantive connection to him. After removing these, I focused on 24 relevant cases for analysis. I then categorized these into three tiers based on factual accuracy and Musk’s role in their spread: (1) true or Musk-originated, (2) false but amplified by Musk, and (3) false with no Musk involvement. This classification reveals the layered architecture of Musk’s influence, ranging from direct authorship to indirect symbolic amplification (see Table 1).

Table 1. Categorization of Elon Musk–related misinformation claims (2024)

Category 1: When Musk speaks and it sticks

Some of the most viral claims from 2024 turned out to be true—or at least grounded in real posts by Musk. In these cases, he was not the victim of distortion but the originator of the message. For example, Musk’s sarcastic call to stop donating to “Wokepedia” (Wikipedia) was a real tweet that generated over 300,000 engagements. Likewise, his quote about a “multiplanetary extinction event” wasn’t invented by fans or critics—it appears to be a central tenet of his SpaceX worldview.

Then there was the viral post about philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Musk tweeted—then deleted—a biting remark that “super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse” were a reason “Western civilization died.” Though it vanished quickly, the internet remembered.

Category 2: When Musk doesn’t lie, but it may seem like he did

Some claims about Musk were false, yet became widely believed because his own tone or timing gave them credibility. After President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, users falsely claimed Musk banned anyone who supported the pardon. That wasn’t true, but Musk had reposted an old Biden tweet saying “No one is above the law,” accompanied by the phrase: “Community Notes slays.” The sarcasm hit hard, and the lie flourished in its shadow.

In another example, Musk shared a misleading claim that Google showed a “Where to Vote” map for Kamala Harris but not for Donald Trump. In reality, Harris is also a county name, and Google’s map feature triggered automatically. Musk later accepted the correction, but by then, the rumor had already ignited.

Category 3: When Musk is just the myth

Many of the most viral claims were complete fabrications, ranging from the absurd to the sentimental. No, Musk didn’t buy McDonald’s, Disney, Boeing, or the New York Jets. He didn’t give a homeless girl a bus and a house. SpaceX isn’t controlling the weather, and robots aren’t carrying human babies. Yet these stories went viral—not because they were true, but because they fit and fed into a larger mythos that Musk himself often plays into: the chaotic billionaire, the savior, the villain, the meme-lord.

Musk was not involved in these cases, but the architecture of his public persona—its volatility, irony, and pattern-breaking—made the falsehoods stick anyway.

Why it spreads: the anatomy of Musk-based misinformation

The content analysis revealed five dominant themes among the misinformation I reviewed:

• Corporate power fantasies
• Culture war triggers
• Free speech ironies
• Techno-dystopian narratives
• Moral hypocrisy

More importantly, I identified recurring drivers of virality: Musk’s sarcastic tone made fake claims feel plausible. Preexisting bias (either worship or disdain) allowed users to accept outlandish rumors. And his reposting- however brief—often gave fringe claims a mainstream boost. Some satire was simply mistaken for news. Other times, ambiguity did the heavy lifting.

Musk as platform, persona, and playbook

Musk’s digital persona isn’t just performative—it’s infrastructural. He uses irony to provoke without committing. He signals without confirming. He leaves enough room for his followers to draw extreme conclusions, and enough plausible deniability to disown them later. The platform (X) amplifies this effect by rewarding engagement rather than accuracy.

Over time, I saw Musk morph from media figure to meta-media figure—a person who influences not just content, but how information itself is constructed, contested, and spread.

To move beyond anecdote, I selected five Musk-authored tweets from 2024 that were directly linked to false or controversial claims flagged by fact-checkers or widely covered in the media. These tweets represent the spectrum of Musk’s communicative influence—from sarcastic truths and speculative provocation to narrative amplification of rumors. I tracked each tweet’s engagement metrics, including replies, reposts, likes, bookmarks, and views, and calculated both follower-based and view-based engagement rates (ER). The numbers are striking: even deleted or short-lived tweets generated tens of thousands of interactions, showing that Musk’s messaging—whether serious, ironic, or misleading—is algorithmically amplified and narratively sticky. These examples offer measurable insight into how his tone and timing intensify the reach and credibility of online misinformation.

Table 2. Engagement rate comparison table: Musk posts (2024). ER = engagement rate (engagements ÷ followers or views × 100)

This influence doesn’t end with Musk’s posts. A BuzzSumo analysis conducted on April 8, 2025, shows that even secondary reporting on Musk’s sarcastic reactions goes viral. One example is a New York Post story headlined “Elon Musk gloats as X fact-checks Biden tweet that ‘no one is above the law’ after Hunter pardon,” which generated significant traction across platforms, with a dominant Facebook reaction of laughter. Despite being just one of many stories covering Musk’s post, the article drew over 1.4K engagements, indicating how Musk’s narrative cues cascade across the media ecosystem and are rewarded with emotional amplification—in this case, mockery and ridicule. His digital rhetoric doesn’t just spread; it sets the tone for how others frame, interpret, and spread it further.

What’s at stake: the global relevance of the Musk model

The Musk model appears to be spreading. Around the world, emerging right-wing and nationalist actors are embracing the same tactics: sarcasm over policy, performance over truth, and trolling as governance. These actors don’t need to fabricate lies themselves—they just need to curate the outrage and ride the algorithm. Increasingly, these patterns are shaping political discourse and bleeding into legal and governance frameworks, where spectacle outpaces regulation and normative safeguards lag behind cultural disruption.

Musk has shown that if you control the narrative stream, you don’t need to control the facts. You don’t even need to speak clearly. You just need to be interesting, unpredictable, and timely. This signals a broader crisis: a shift in legitimacy from institutional knowledge to virality, from procedural accountability to performative influence. Musk is a prototype for a new kind of elite: digitally fluent, politically agile, and unconstrained by traditional norms of accountability. And as legal regimes scramble to adapt, we must ask: who holds narrative power in the digital economy, and under what jurisdictional logic?

When narrative power outruns democratic control

Elon Musk’s communicative power reveals the fragility of digital democracy. Through sarcasm, virality, and the erosion of truth boundaries, he has become a case study in how private influence can rival public accountability. Even when he doesn’t fabricate misinformation, he helps engineer the climate where it thrives.

The stories surrounding Elon Musk in 2024—whether fabricated, exaggerated, or fueled by his own provocations—are more than isolated media phenomena. They function as playbooks of digital power, illustrating how ambiguity, amplification, and affect can be tactically deployed in an era of institutional distrust. From India’s data localization efforts to Europe’s Digital Services Act, we are witnessing early legal attempts to reclaim epistemic authority and narrative space.

What makes Musk’s presence so potent is not merely the scale of his platform (X), but the political grammar he performs: an anti-establishment figure who mocks elites while sitting atop them. This duality—outsider optics with insider access—is emblematic of a new class of digital actors operating in legal grey zones. These tensions are being mirrored elsewhere. From satire that becomes reality to policy discussions reduced to viral posts, this Muskian model—populist in tone, opportunistic in tactic—has quietly become a prototype for digital-era political behavior, not just in the US, but across the world.

But beneath all the memes and headlines lies a more sobering reality. We’re living in an era where private individuals can steer public conversation with little accountability, where algorithms reward outrage, and where truth fractures into clickable fragments. Musk’s influence reminds us that you don’t need to silence people to control what they believe—you just need to be louder, faster, and more entertaining. And as more political actors around the world adopt this model—blending tech swagger, cultural trolling, and selective indignation—it’s clear that this isn’t just about one man or one platform. It’s about how power is being rewritten in real time—where performance replaces policy, and spectacle becomes the new form of governance.

That shift demands more than passive observation—it’s an affront to the very idea of an informed public. We can’t treat these transformations as isolated anecdotes or inevitable glitches in the system. They are signs of something larger: a dilapidated information environment where spectacle thrives and responsibility slips through the cracks. Even if we continue to scroll through X—or find ourselves unable to leave, caught in an addictive cycle of performance and provocation—we must resist the urge to succumb to numbness. Critique must stay loud. Awareness must grow. The line between narrative power and democratic control is indivisible from the question of who shapes truth, and for whom. Today, that line is being redrawn—not just by tech billionaires, but by states rethinking digital self-determination in an era of informational asymmetry.

Appendix: Fact-Checked Claims Related to Elon Musk (2024)

Note: This table includes 24 high-impact claims drawn from a larger dataset of 50 fact-checks collected throughout 2024. After removing duplicates and irrelevant items, these entries were selected based on their public visibility, engagement, and narrative significance.