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How Disinformation About the Minnesota Shooting Spread Like Wildfire on X
Under Elon Musk’s leadership, X has become the perfect platform to supercharge the spread of dangerous disinformation during breaking news events.
Within hours, the platform was flooded with wild claims about the shooter and her motivation, with everyone from Elon Musk, the site’s owner, to the head of the FBI and left-wing activists posting half-baked allegations blaming anti-Christian hate, transgender genocide, and white supremacy. “They clearly state several times they are not doing this for any ideology or cause, they are simply doing this for the sake of violence, for their desire for notoriety, to know what it feels like to be one of their idols, to cause chaos and see the fear in the eyes of their victims,” Marc-André Argentino, an extremism researcher, wrote on Bluesky in reference to the diaries the shooter posted to YouTube hours before the attack. This lack of oversight, combined with a new verification system that rewards posts with the highest engagement over verified sources, has resulted in a toxic stew of disinformation flooding the platform during major global breaking news events.
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