Election denialism emerges on the left after Trump’s win

In the days following the presidential election, a familiar strain of denialism and conspiracy thinking emerged in the corners of some social media platforms

In the days following the presidential election, a familiar strain of denialism and conspiracy thinking began to emerge in the corners of some social media platforms. On the right, familiar conspiracy theories about voting popularized by President-elect Donald Trump continued to circulate. But similar ideas also took hold among some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris and have continued to spread.

NewsGuard, a firm that monitors misinformation, found that nearly 800 social media accounts and video channels had published false or egregiously misleading claims about the 2024 election starting on Sept. 1, along with over 960 websites and more than 1,200 “partisan sites masquerading as politically neutral local news outlets.” Sam Howard, NewsGuard’s U.S. politics editor, said that the misleading election claims had been seen on a variety of platforms, including X, Threads, Reddit and Facebook.

According to NewsGuard, the false narratives being spread online have emerged from both sides of the aisle: Where Democrats won, like in the U.S. Senate election in Wisconsin, Republicans alleged vote-counting “irregularities,” while some Democrats alleged that Trump’s win was rigged with the help of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet provider. There’s no evidence this is true.

On platforms including TikTok and X, NBC News identified dozens of videos and posts — which reached over 10 million viewers, according to public view counts — that shared conspiracy theories related to Musk, Starlink and election denialism. NewsGuard said there was “no evidence” that Starlink was used to interfere with the presidential election in Trump’s favor. Individual election systems are not interconnected, and there is no evidence currently suggesting that Starlink or Musk interfered with vote tallies.

Max Read, a senior research manager for elections at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank studying extremism, hate and disinformation, said the post-election denialism popping up on the left is “the most significant” effort to dispute or undermine elections he has observed from that side of the aisle.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/election-denialism-emerges-left-trumps-win-rcna179797

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