A PAC to which Elon Musk once pledged $45 million a month to boost Donald Trump’s re-election bid is engaging in questionable data-scraping practices, a report says.
Per CNBC, Musk’s America PAC is running vivid ads featuring an assassination attempt on Trump promoting voter registration resources, but directing swing-state voters through separate forms, which collect extensive personal data and opt registrants into messaging from the group.
Salon confirmed that zip codes entered on a voter registration section on America PAC’s website in key swing states, including Arizona and Pennsylvania, brought users to a separate form from users who inputted zip codes in states like New York or Texas, who are linked directly to states’ voter registration sites.
Swing-state voters, who are prompted to hand over their age, address, phone number, and other sensitive data to the Tesla CEO’s organization, weren’t given similar links to voter registration sites as non-swing-state voters.
The report comes as the far-right billionaire’s influence in the 2024 race increasingly worries watchdogs, who point to the massive sums of money tossed around by Musk in addition to the dangerous, conspiracy-laden rhetoric he amplifies online.
Musk recently shared an undisclosed deepfake video of Vice President Kamala Harris on the X platform, which he purchased to protect conservative speech online. The video, which featured a fake Harris labeling herself as a “diversity hire,” was condemned by the Harris campaign for the false and racist content.
The executive, who is reportedly being considered for a role in the Trump administration, is also leveraging the X platform to push Trump, including suspending pro-Harris fundraising accounts and pushing the Trump-Vance ticket in undisclosed advertisements.
The efforts mirror Trump campaign-affiliated Cambridge Analytica’s 2016 efforts to scrape data from tens of millions of Facebook users in an effort to manipulate voters, a scandal that cost Facebook owner Meta $725 million in a class-action payout.
