Elon Musk tweets rumor about Paul Pelosi - Axios

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It's been conscionable 2 days since Elon Musk officially bought Twitter. Already, the billionaire businessman is utilizing the level to dispersed misinformation to his 112 cardinal followers — astir the biggest U.S. quality of the weekend.

Driving the news: Early connected Sunday, Musk cited a widely-discredited website that implied the brutal onslaught connected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, wasn't carried retired by an unhinged far-right blogger — but alternatively was linked to an anti-LGTBQ "theory" astir a skirmish astatine a section bar.

• “There is simply a tiny anticipation determination mightiness beryllium much to this communicative than meets the eye,” Musk said successful effect to a tweet from Hillary Clinton.
• Clinton tweeted a Los Angeles Times article astir the suspect, David DePape, 42, who dispersed QAnon and different far-right conspiracies: “The Republican Party and its mouthpieces present regularly dispersed hatred and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that unit is the result.”

Via Twitter

Why it matters: Musk linked to an nonfiction from the Santa Monica Observer, a website known for years for publishing false stories.

• The tract "is thing but trustworthy," according to an enforcement at NewsGuard, a institution that uses trained journalists to complaint quality and accusation sites.
• The tract has a spot people of 44.5 retired of 100 points connected NewsGuard’s standing standard for trustworthiness, owed to repeatedly publishing galore conspiracy theories and mendacious claims astir politics, the pandemic and more.
• The tract gets a red-rating and a informing for readers that says: "Proceed with caution: This website fails to adhere to respective basal journalistic standards."

What to watch: Musk’s tweets person influence. The Observer's website went down aboriginal Sunday greeting soon aft the tweet was published, seemingly owed to an influx of postulation from Musk’s tweet.

• An mistake leafage work that the site’s web server, Cloudflare, was "returning an chartless error."

The large picture: Musk has said helium plans to rotation backmost contented moderation connected the level successful favour of “free speech,” but has besides tried to assure advertisers that "Twitter evidently cannot go a free-for-all hellscape.”

Editor's note: This mentation updates the header for precision.