‘Liar’, Elon Musk, the owner of the micro-blogging site X (Former Twitter), has taken a swipe at US Vice President Kamala Harris for claiming that former President Donald Trump supports the abortion ban.
On Monday, distantly Harris on X made what one can consider exaggerated statements claiming that Trump, who is competing against President Joe Biden in the pending November 5 ^{th} US presidential elections, “would ban abortion across the country. ”
Nonetheless, Musk quickly addressed Harris and said, “When will politicians or at least the intern who runs the account learn that lying on this platform doesn’t work anymore?” To this post, Musk attached a screenshot of her post that had already been debunked using the platform’s Community Notes, a sort of fact-checking tool that the user can enable to add context to contentious posts.
According to the Community Note in Harris’ post, President Trump has time and again availed a statement that he will not sign a national abortion ban.
Further, Musk expounded that Trump has ‘’clearly said he would not do so’’ during the recent US Presidential debate with Biden.
The case of the abortion ban has been a subject of debate when it comes to the current presidential campaign, which has led to the Supreme Court in 2022 and the decision to eliminate the right that women claim to control their bodies as per the 1973 ruling in the roe vs. wade case; this means individual states are now free to control the abortion process.
X’s Community Notes aims to “help people on X to make the world more informed on it and help them add some context to the post that can be fake news. ” While posting a message, a contributor can add a note; if other contributors with different points of view as to its helpfulness rate the note positively, it becomes displayed in public.
Thus, Musk’s criticism of Harris’ post demonstrates how social media outlets have adopted the roles of fact-checkers of political speeches and performers of the candidates during the 2024 US presidential campaign.
