Once again, Elon Musk, the owner of the platform X, is facing a defamation lawsuit. And once again one has to ask: What is this man doing running one of the most influential social media platforms in the world?
One day in June, Ben Brody, who had just graduated from college, started receiving odd texts from his friends. They said there was a rumor circulating online that he was an undercover federal agent who was trying to provoke fights between brawling neo-Nazi groups in Oregon. Sitting at home in California, the confused Brody initially thought it was all a prank.
It’s bad enough to be the subject of an online mob’s false conspiracy theory. It’s worse when one of the most influential men in the world seems to cosign that theory.
It wasn’t. Unbeknownst to Brody, online sleuths had been searching for the identity of an unmasked participant in a skirmish that had recently broken out between two far-right groups near a Pride Night near Portland. Some of the self-appointed investigators had mistakenly identified Brody as the unmasked man in a video, and after delving into Brody’s publicly biographical information — indicating that he was a college student who said he was interested in working in government — they surmised that he was an undercover “fed” and agent provocateur.
It’s bad enough to be the subject of an online mob’s false conspiracy theory. It’s worse when one of the most influential men in the world seems to cosign that theory. On X, Musk responded encouragingly to multiple posts making speculative or false claims about Brody. Even after Brody had posted a video with evidence that he had been in California when the fight occurred, Musk suggested he believed Brody was in Oregon and likely part of some kind of operation. “Looks like one is a college student (who wants to join the govt) and another is maybe an Antifa member,” he wrote. “But nonetheless a probable false flag situation.” Musk also tagged “Community…
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