Within minutes of President Joe Biden endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him on the Democratic Party’s ticket on Sunday, the internet crackled with lies, altered photos and other misleading claims about Harris.
Some supporters of former President Donald Trump – the Republican nominee in the November election – even suggested Biden was the victim of a coup.
Meanwhile, a slew of slickly edited pro-Harris videos quickly proliferated on social media as her backers tried to capitalize on the moment.
The vitriol and counter-punches are a likely preview of the final three months of the presidential campaign, where a furious battle to shape and smear Harris’ image will play out at a moment where social media platforms have weakened guardrails on disinformation.
“As Kamala Harris becomes increasingly likely to be the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party and gains more public spotlight, the corresponding amount of disinformation and misleading rhetoric will grow exponentially,” Erik Nisbet, a professor at Northwestern University’s School of Communication, told CNN.
On X, owner Elon Musk fanned an antisemitic conspiracy theory by replying to a photo of Harris and Alexander Soros, son of the billionaire megadonor George Soros, by suggesting that Harris would be a “puppet” of the Soros family. Musk endorsed Trump this month and has been pumping out pro-Trump content to his roughly 190 million followers.
Photoshopped images of Harris also circulated. One image of Harris posing with her husband had been edited to make it appear like the vice-president had posed with Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier and accused sex trafficker.
On X, the hashtag “She’s Indian” was trending in the hours after Biden’s announcement, with some users advancing a false smear of Harris that she is “not Black” (Harris’ mother was born in India and her father was born in Jamaica).
A review by social media analytics firm PeakMetrics of nearly 175,000 posts on X between 6 and 7 pm ET on Sunday that mentioned Harris in relation to Biden’s announcement found that 8.3% of the posts used “racialized” language in referring to Harris, while 4.5% posts used “sexualized” language.
Biden’s likeness was also exploited in the aftermath of his announcement, which came via a post on social media and not televised address. A fake expletive-laden video purportedly of Biden announcing his decision to leave the race began circulating on X.
PBS News, whose logo was featured in the video, issued a statement describing the video as a “deepfake,” adding, “PBS News did not authorize the use of this video and we do not condone altering news video or audio in any way that could mislead the audience.”
On TikTok, pro-Harris videos surged, many referencing a coconut meme that has become synonymous with support of her candidacy. (In 2023, Harris gave a speech on advancing opportunities for Hispanic Americans that included a line that she attributed to her mother about understanding the context of young people’s lives: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”) One TikTok video, a round-up of Harris memes, had over 712,000 likes and 73,000 shares.
Harris’ team has also embraced a viral post from British pop singer Charli XCX that referred to Harris as “brat,” a concept that includes women and queer empowerment.
Russian state media was also quick to react to Biden’s decision to drop out. Sputnik, one of a number of pro-Kremlin mouthpieces, falsely suggested in a tweet that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been a “curse” on Biden.
“I don’t think Kremlin-aligned accounts will drive conversations related to this news,” Joseph Bodnar, a researcher who tracks pro-Kremlin media, told CNN. “But they’re certainly happy to boost divisive domestic narratives.”
Foreign operatives will have a hard time outpacing the real-life twists and turns around the US presidential campaign, according to some experts.
“Imagine being a foreign disinfo/information operations actor trying to compete with the actual news this election cycle,” quipped Shane Huntley, a cyber threat intelligence expert at Google, on X.
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