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Following Republican candidate Donald Trump's White House victory, conspiracy theorists claimed on social media that Elon Musk used his Starlink satellite network to "steal" the 2024 Presidential elections.
Ironically, Trump also called foul play when the results of the 2020 elections did not go his way—a claim he held onto during the 2024 Presidential campaign, and faced significant criticism for, Knewz.com has learned.
It has been reported that claims of Trump's billionaire supporter using his satellite tech to swing the election results in his favor originated from "left-wing" conspiracy theorists and have been shared by thousands on social media—including Musk's own platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
A post on the social media platform Threads, which has over 42,000 views and 840 shares, claimed that Musk knew the results of the November 5 elections "four hours earlier than we did."
The post went on to claim that the SpaceX CEO had used Starlink to "explode" communications satellites and "destroy the evidence."
A nine-minute TikTok video that has had more than 100,000 likes and 55,000 shares, and has been viewed almost 900,000 times, spread a similar rumor, claiming that Musk used “Starlink in order to tally up or count ballots.”
"This is why the numbers don’t make sense," the immensely popular TikTok video claimed, referring to the rumored disappearance of 20 million votes in the election.
It is worth noting that, according to reports, the rumors regarding the 20 million "missing" votes were spread by the Democrats who were unhappy with the results of the 2024 elections, as well as Republicans who believe a "stolen" election was responsible for Trump's failed re-election bid in 2020.
Meanwhile, social media saw hashtags such as "TrumpCheated" go viral, while people buying into the stolen election rumors called for recounts in the battleground states.
According to disinformation analysts at NewsGuard, the hashtag #DoNotConcedeKamala received 30,300 mentions in eight hours on the day following the election.
NewsGuard analysts reported that "left-leaning social media users claimed that the apparent momentum behind Kamala Harris before the election made it impossible for her to lose, so the only explanation was widespread fraud."
It has been pointed out that the cries of unfair elections by Democrat supporters are similar to the claims of "voter fraud" propagated by the Trump campaign after the former President's election loss in 2020—a narrative that was believed by many of Trump's supporters.
Furthermore, the call for Harris to not concede the 2024 elections echoes the sentiment behind the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, which aimed at preventing Joe Biden from being sworn in as the new President and reinstating Trump instead.
Alex Stamos, chief information security officer at the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, said in a recent statement, "This election was not stolen. Neither was 2020."
"We warned about this exact potential outcome in 2020: the losing side of every subsequent election rejecting the results," Stamos added.
It is worth noting that Cyabra, an Israeli start-up that tracks disinformation campaigns, found that the posts claiming the 2024 elections were stolen – and alleging Musk and Starlink's involvement in the matter – were first made viral using fake accounts.
Once the narrative gained traction on social media, real online influencers started amplifying the rumors.
"Cyabra found that 270 apparently fake X profiles sent more than 2,100 posts including the hashtag, which were viewed around 40m times. After this, genuine Harris supporters began to share the same claims," reports have mentioned.
Grace Rahman, news and online editor at Meta fact-checking partner Full Fact, said in a statement:
"Fact checkers have debunked a variety of claims so far, including allegations that Kamala Harris won in states that don’t require voter ID – which is factually incorrect – and unfounded claims that millions of ballots were ‘missing’ that emerged before counting had finished."
"Even without evidence, false claims like these can be corrosive to public trust in the US and beyond. We urge everyone to check what they’ve seen online is accurate and consult trusted sources before sharing," Rahman added.
Notably, Trump himself had claimed on Election Day that there was "massive CHEATING in Philadelphia," while local election officials assured that was not the case and that there was “absolutely no truth” in the Republican candidate's social media claims.
Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said in a statement in the aftermath of the elections that there was “no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.”