Elon Musk Accused of Bending X Rules for Himself

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has been accused of manipulating X, formerly Twitter, which he purchased in October 2022, to benefit his own posts, despite it going against the platform's guidelines.

The Tesla CEO bought the social media giant in a $44-billion deal and, since taking over, rebranded the platform and has caused quite a stir at times, often sharing what many have considered controversial statements.

Now, Musk appears to have removed the Community Notes option for one of his posts, according to one social media-savvy individual. This community-driven feature allows contributors to leave comments on posts, such as fact-checking to help give context or opposing views.

This has rubbed many app users the wrong way, who have called out Musk for the move, alleging he is not subject to the platform's rules and regulations.

X's guidelines on its website state: "Community Notes aim to create a better-informed world by empowering people on X to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts. Contributors can leave notes on any post and if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a post."

On February 17, Musk replied to X account @WallStreetSilv which shared a CBS segment on Harlem residents in New York City voicing their thoughts and anger over a potential homeless shelter opening in the neighborhood.

The post was captioned: "Protest break out in Harlem after residents found out NYC was turning a luxury building into a shelter for illegal migrants. How far to the left will NYC go before it's completely destroyed?"

Musk replied with: "Almost every illegal is a Dem voter. Therefore, the Dem Party will not take action until they lose more votes due to ushering in vast numbers of illegals than they gain.

"They are counting on complacency from Dem and independent voters, which, at least so far, has worked. Simple matter of incentives."

A user of the app noticed that he or others were unable to leave a Community Note and said: "He definitely has disabled community notes for his own tweets."

"He sure has. What a mass generalization & factually incorrect about voting," a second echoed.

"Blocking him is always an option" was also suggested by an observer.

Others did point out that Musk had received community notes before. "I have seen plenty of community notes on Elon tweets," wrote one.

Another user commented on the post: "Almost every post of his gets Community Noted, but usually the CN is irrelevant, very biased, and not warranted. That is why they rarely get posted" to which an individual added: "He used to get one like once a month but since he's started talking about immigration—nothing. And he's lying a lot and obviously."

Newsweek has contacted X and Tesla's press teams via email for comment.

Some of Musk's other controversial statements on the platform have seen him take swipes at Disney when they pulled advertising funding due to hate speech and antisemitic rhetoric on the site, as well as spats with other notable figures, such as Stephen King.