A crowdsourced fact-checking system on Elon Musk's platform X failed to flag almost all of the posts it examined that spread false claims about the coming United States midterm elections, including four such claims advanced by Musk's own account, according to a new analysis from the media watchdog NewsGuard.
The study, published on 21 October 2026 in the watchdog's newsletter, Reality Check, found that X's Community Notes feature failed to flag 93.1 per cent of the posts it sampled that spread false election claims. NewsGuard reviewed 189 posts on 19 October matched to its database of debunked claims. Of those, 176 carried no note, and just 13, or 6.9 per cent, had one as of 20 October. The posts had drawn millions of interactions ahead of the 3 November vote.
