Starlink did not respond to a request for comment.
This conspiracy theory continues to proliferate, and it’s not just limited to X: Discussion threads on Reddit, posts on Instagram and threads, and dozens of Facebook posts all push the narrative that Musk colluded with Trump as his star. Stole election using Link satellite.
One of the most active platforms for these conspiracy theories is TikTok. WIRED reviewed dozens of videos posted on the platform in which users repeat claims about Musk and Starlink or add new twists to conspiracy theories.
X, Meta, Reddit, and TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.
One of the most popular new aspects of the theory concerns the fact that Starlink satellites were seen burning in the US last weekend, furthering the conspiracy theory’s claims of Musk’s attempt to cover his tracks. There is evidence. The reality is that Starlink satellites are designed to burn up upon re-entry at the end of their lifespan.
The conspiracy theory has similarities to the so-called Italygate conspiracy pushed by the Trump campaign after the 2020 election, which suggested that an Italian military satellite was used to sway votes from Trump to President Joe Biden. .
“It’s to see it solidify and feed into certain narratives, and then see things add up—that’s what we saw last time,” Thomas says. “You see this kind of collective storytelling that happens in communities where people who are trying to gain influence online by promoting a new version of a conspiracy theory, all of them have their own little side of it. Little things have to be added to get them engaged.”
Other conspiracy theorists claimed that Trump talked about a “little secret” he had on stage with Musk, referring to comments he made at Madison Square Garden last month. What happened during the rally? In fact, the comment was directed at House Speaker Mike Johnson. Some left-leaning accounts also pointed to comments by podcaster Joe Rogan this week that Musk had developed a special app to give early access to election results.
Rogan said Elon apparently created an app and knew who won the election four hours before the results. “So as the results were coming in, four hours before they called, Dana White told me that Alvin said, ‘I’m leaving. It’s over. Donald won.'” It’s not clear what. How the app worked or what data it used.
“There was no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure,” Jane Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which oversees US elections, said in a statement on November 6. be.”
While some right-wing figures have been pushing election conspiracy theories, the majority have gone silent in the wake of Trump’s victory, overnight abandoning four years of non-stop posting and shouting about election fraud.
And while left-wing election machinations are nowhere near the scale of the Stop the Steel movement just weeks ago, some experts are still concerned.
“I’ve seen the contests for Stop the Steel and some of these other right-wing conspiracy election theories, and it’s shorter than they were at the end of the Trump presidency,” Thomas says. “But I think the key difference is that they came after months, if not years, of deliberate protest and cultivation by various actors. So, for me, the electoral fraud of the left. To see conspiracy theories coming to the fore so quickly is, I think, personally, quite alarming.”
