X Bot Networks Are Fueling Election Conspiracy Theories

Some of the loudest voices arguing about American politics this year may not be people at all. A new Global Witness investigation, reported by AFP, found that a cluster of bot-like accounts which spent months spreading misinformation and hate around Britain's election has pivoted to US politics, amplifying conspiracy theories as the race for the White House heats up. The watchdog describes them as X bot networks: accounts that look automated, behave in coordinated ways, and thrive on division.

The scale is difficult to brush off. Global Witness analyzed forty-five accounts that together generated more than four billion impressions since late May, according to the report published Tuesday, after tracking them through the run-up to the British polls. Some of the accounts subsequently pivoted to other high-profile events ahead of the November US presidential election, including the recent assassination attempt on Trump and Biden's withdrawal from the race, the watchdog said. The accounts produced roughly six hundred ten thousand posts, amplifying racist and sexualized abuse, climate disinformation, and posts about anti-migrant protests in Ireland. It remains unclear who runs the X bot networks, and the watchdog said it found no evidence that any British political party paid for, used, or promoted the accounts.

From British ballots to American conspiracies

The pivot to American politics was fast and pointed. After the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, accounts that had previously supported Britain's right-wing Reform UK party were found sharing unfounded theories that blamed Joe Biden, the watchdog said. Meanwhile, accounts that had backed Britain's Labour party pushed the opposite fringe claim, questioning whether the attempt had been staged by Trump himself. The same X bot networks were quick to exploit every twist in the US race.

When Biden announced he was pulling out, the accounts shifted targets again. A number of them increased discussion of Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, spreading what the report described as gendered disinformation tropes alongside racist comments, according to AFP. Global Witness campaign leader Ava Lee said in the report that it was shocking how easy it had been to find apparently automated accounts spreading division around the UK vote and then jumping straight into US and Irish political discussion with hate and conspiracy. She added that democracies needed reliable, timely information more than ever, and called on X to increase moderation and enforce its own rules against inauthentic activity, saying democracies were counting on the platform to protect them from interference.

Conspiracy culture has had a busy year elsewhere too. David Grusch's appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast turned UAP claims into a conspiracy goldmine, while mysterious lights over Tehran and a fresh round of AI conspiracy theories kept the genre fed. What sets the X bot networks apart is coordination: these accounts are built to make fringe claims look like mass opinion.

Why the bots keep winning

None of this was supposed to happen. Before buying the platform in 2022, Elon Musk pledged to "defeat the spam bots or die trying." The X bot networks, it turns out, never went away. A report from Australia's Queensland University of Technology said last year, after an analysis of about one million posts, that X was flooded with platform manipulation, was not doing enough to moderate content, and had no clear strategy for dealing with political disinformation, according to AFP. The platform has also gutted its trust and safety teams and scaled back the moderation work that once held misinformation in check, leaving researchers to describe it as a haven for disinformation.

Musk himself has become part of the story. The billionaire endorsed Trump and later shared a deepfake video featuring Harris on X, a move tech campaigners said violated the platform's own policies, AFP reported. When AFP asked X for comment on the Global Witness findings, the platform did not reply; the only response from its press team was an automated message reading "Busy now, please check back later." The non-answer fits the pattern Lee described: the X bot networks keep running while X's own enforcement stays weak.

The X bot networks Global Witness tracked did not invent any of the theories they spread. They just made sure the theories traveled further and faster, and arrived looking like a groundswell instead of a script.