Elon Musk on Thursday said he is going to “fix” his social media platform’s X Community Notes feature, claiming without evidence the feature is being “gamed” by governments and legacy media.”
“Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media,” Musk wrote on X. “Working to fix this …”
The tech billionaire’s remarks were included in a repost of a circulating poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) finding 57 percent of Ukrainians trust President Zelensky. The poll was referenced in a CNN fact check of President Trump, who claimed Wednesday that Zelensky has a 4 percent approval rating.
Musk reposted a user claiming KIIS was funded by the United States Agency for International Development — the agency that Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency panel is trying to eliminate. The user also claimed KIIS is run by a “VERY patriotic Ukrainian named Anton Hrushetskyi,” and suggested the polling is likely not credible.
Musk echoed this sentiment, writing, “It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!!”
“If Zelensky was actually loved by the people of Ukraine, he would hold an election. He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of ALL Ukrainian media, so he canceled the election,” he wrote. “In reality, he is despised by the people of Ukraine, which is why he has refused to hold an election. I challenge Zelensky to hold an election and refute this. He will not.”
Trump has ramped up his criticism of Zelensky in recent days and on Wednesday accused the Ukrainian president of taking advantage of the United States.
Trump said Zelensky has done a “terrible job” at leading Ukraine and claimed he “refuses” to have elections. Ukraine postponed its 2024 presidential elections because of martial law being in place amid the Russian invasion.
The Community Notes feature on X allows users to submit fact checks to potentially misleading or false posts. The feature was rolled out by Musk after he bought the social media platform, then known as Twitter, in 2021 and overhauled many of the safety and content moderation policies previously in place.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is also planning to roll out a community notes feature to replace its since-eliminated fact-checking system, which it said was “seen, by many, as biased.”
