X proprietor and Trump supporter Elon Musk reposted a message on Election Day claiming Google helps Harris voters discover polling locations, whereas not doing the identical for Trump voters, however the search large is doing no such factor.
At about 3 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Musk reposted a conspiracy principle on X, the social media web site he owns, that falsely claims Google is giving Kamala Harris an unfair benefit.
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Sharing a message from X person DogeDesigner to his 203 million followers, Musk wrote, “Are others seeing this too?” Based on DogeDesigner, “Google exhibits a ‘The place to Vote’ part with a map for Kamala Harris, however not for Donald Trump.
The like button has modified on X, however solely on these Election-related subjects
Google is the largest company donor to the Democratic Social gathering.”
The issue is DogeDesigner is manner off — Google’s “The place to Vote” part contains voting data for counties, not candidates. Presumably unbeknownst to each DogeDesigner and Musk, there’s a Harris County in each Texas and Georgia.
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Beneath DogeDesigner’s submit was a Group Word with extra context supplied: “The search question works as a result of Harris is a county in Texas.”
Readers added that surname-sounding counties like Clark, Clinton, Eden, Franklin, Floyd, Leon, and Marcy are all searchable on Google’s “The place to Vote” function.
Moreover, the NewsFromGoogle X account tweeted an identical message:
Placated by Google’s clarification, Musk reposted their message at about 4 p.m. EST, writing, “Thanks for the clarification,” although his authentic repost on the topic stays on his account.
Misinformation has been rife in the course of the 2024 election. Lies, conspiracy theories, and political deepfakes have circulated on main social media platforms, making it troublesome for individuals to know what’s actual and what’s not. Simply days earlier than the election, for instance, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning, urging voters to hunt dependable data from trusted sources, together with their native election workplace.
You’ll find your native workplace by utilizing this search instrument from the U.S. authorities. By way of its #TrustedInfo2024 marketing campaign, the Nationwide Affiliation of Secretaries of State additionally supplies a roundup of official hyperlinks to often requested questions on each state and territory’s election course of. By way of these hyperlinks, you’ll be able to study primary, correct details about the election, corresponding to the place to vote and the way votes are counted, subjects that could be topic to last-minute rumors and misinformation.
To vet suspicious claims in actual time, you might also take into account consulting trusted fact-checking and misinformation-detecting shops, together with Reality.verify.org, Politifact, The Washington Publish’s Reality Checker, Snopes, and NewsGuard’s Election Misinformation Monitoring Middle.
