Office Hours: Is Elon Musk stifling honest debate over what’s happening in Gaza and Israel?

Escalating lies on “X” — including Musk’s own posts — raise new questions about his power over what we know and learn

Friends,

For years, I’ve warned about the dangers of wealth concentrating in the hands of a few.

Elon Musk is busy proving me right. Last October, he bought Twitter for $44 billion, fired most of its staff (including everyone who had tried to keep its content free from dangerous lies), and invited poisonous liars back on the platform, saying he was a “free speech absolutist.”

And now — in the midst of a war between Gaza militants and Israel, when people around the world are desperate to know what’s happening — Musk has personally recommended that users follow accounts notorious for promoting lies.

“For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good,” Musk posted Sunday.

Good?

“War Monitor” has posted that “the overwhelming majority of people in the media and banks are zionists,” thanked Kanye West “for being the only man with influence to stand up and talk about the injustices going on,” and, according to The Washington Post, posted that a correspondent should “go worship a jew lil bro.”

A researcher at the Atlantic Council Digital Forensics Lab has concluded that “@sentdefender” is “absolutely poisonous … regularly posting wrong and unverifiable things … inserting random editorialization and trying to juice its paid subscriber count.”

My point isn’t that Musk is antisemitic. His threat to sue the Anti-Defamation League over its reports showing a rise in antisemitic posts on X since Musk bought it, doesn’t reveal antisemitism. But it does offer another illustration of how he uses his vast wealth to control what people know.

That’s the underlying problem — the increasing power of billionaires like Musk to determine what information users get. It’s a power that threatens our democracy. “X” is rapidly becoming a cesspool of odious lies, hate speech, and powerful voices (like Musk’s) arbitrarily directing people to misleading sources.

And I’m not just talking about the war between Gaza militants and Israel.

A recent study published by the European Commission concluded that Russian propaganda about its war in Ukraine has reached more people on X this year than it did last year.

So today’s Office Hours question: Is Musk gaining too much influence over what we know and think, and, if so, what should be done about it?

Please share your thoughts (and, if so inclined, take our poll).