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 big is doing no such factor.
At about 3 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Musk reposted a conspiracy concept on X, the social media website 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 reveals 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 matters
Google is the largest company donor to the Democratic Celebration.”
The issue is DogeDesigner is means off — Google’s “The place to Vote” part contains voting info for counties, not candidates. Probably unbeknownst to each DogeDesigner and Musk, there’s a Harris County in each Texas and Georgia.
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Beneath DogeDesigner’s publish was a Group Be aware 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 the same 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 throughout the 2024 election. Lies, conspiracy theories, and political deepfakes have circulated on main social media platforms, making it tough for folks 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 info from trusted sources, together with their native election workplace.
You could 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 offers a roundup of official hyperlinks to regularly requested questions on each state and territory’s election course of. By way of these hyperlinks, you may be taught primary, correct details about the election, similar to the place to vote and the way votes are counted, matters which may 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 retailers, together with Truth.verify.org, Politifact, The Washington Publish’s Truth Checker, Snopes, and NewsGuard’s Election Misinformation Monitoring Heart.
