'Cancer on our society': Social media, bots spread misinformation following Charlie Kirk shooting

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has repeatedly urged people to avoid social media after Charlie Kirk's shooting.
• Cox highlights misinformation spread by bots from Russia and China, among other actors, on social media.
• Misinformation included false claims about a suspect and even Kirk's death itself.

OREM — In the aftermath of last week's fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during an event at Utah Valley University, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox urged people to stay off social media and "spend a little time with our families."

His comments came during a Utah Department of Public Safety and FBI press conference regarding what was, at the time, an ongoing manhunt.

Specifically, Cox called out what he said was a "tremendous amount" of disinformation spreading across social media in the wake of the shooting.

"What we're seeing is our adversaries want violence. We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world, that are trying to instill disinformation and encourage violence," Cox said.

He added that both state and federal authorities have been tracking this disinformation and that he anticipates having "more to say about that in the days and weeks to come."

Of course, Cox's social media-weary sentiment is nothing new.

Utah in June accused the owner of the social media platform Snapchat of using "deceptive," addictive features to attract children to the app and not doing enough to protect young users' well-being and privacy.

The state made the allegations in a 90-page lawsuit filed against Snap Inc. in Utah's 3rd District Court, claiming the company has violated state laws on consumer protection and privacy.

It's not the first legal action Utah has taken against major social media platforms in recent years, and many of the allegations in this lawsuit — including that the platform doesn't adequately verify the ages of users and that it facilitates sexual exploitation and drug sales — are similar to those made against other social media giants.

Bots and misinformation

But what about Cox's claims of bots and their work in spreading misinformation? As it turns out, this is far from a new phenomenon — especially following a crisis.

In a 2024 blog post on the University of Virginia's website, Ali Ünlü, a researcher and policy analyst with the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development, said bots on social media generally refer to automated accounts often used by organizations to automatically share content such as news or event updates.

"We often don't know who controls these accounts or what their goals are. Recent advancements in AI, especially generative AI, allow bots to blur the line between human and machine. This makes it challenging for even experts to determine whether they're interacting with a person or a bot," Ünlü said.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Elon Musk's Grok chatbot incorrectly said in a social media post on X that a suspect named Michael Mallinson was in custody.

That was never true.

Mallinson, a 77-year-old man and retired banker currently living in Toronto, has never set foot in the Beehive State. A day after Kirk was killed, Mallinson told the CBC that he felt "violated."

"This was all shock and horror, first of all, that there'd been a shooting, but second of all that I was in any way named or implicated in it," Mallinson said.

The Grok post, incorrectly implicating Mallinson, is still up on X's website.

Two days after the shooting, Cox announced on Friday that the man suspected of shooting and killing Kirk had been arrested.

Tyler James Robinson, 22, of Washington, Washington County, was arrested in southern Utah after police received tips from Robinson's family members and a friend.

Even then, social media was rampant with misinformation, with Grok again acting as a well-followed (6.2 million followers on X) source of that misinformation.

Specifically, Grok's replies to X users' inquiries about Robinson were often contradictory.

One Grok post said Robinson was a registered Republican, while others reported he was a nonpartisan voter. Voter registration records indicate Robinson is not affiliated with a political party and apparently hasn't voted in the last two election cycles.

CBS reported that the AI-powered search engine Perplexity's X bot described the shooting as a "hypothetical scenario" in a since-deleted post and suggested a White House statement on Kirk's death was fabricated.

How do bots influence public opinion?

Ünlü said that bots are primarily used to influence public opinion by entities including domestic interest groups, extremist organizations and even foreign governments, echoing Cox's sentiments about bots from Russia and China.

"Bots can influence public opinion by shaping what topics are discussed or 'agenda setting.' By flooding social media with posts on specific issues, bots can create a false sense of urgency or consensus, leading people to believe that certain topics are more significant than they are," Ünlü said. "Additionally, bots play a major role in spreading misinformation and disinformation. With generative AI, they can create content tailored to specific audiences using humor, memes and even sarcasm to make messages more compelling. This makes it easier for bots to sway public opinion or mislead people on important issues."

Speaking last Friday following Robinson's arrest, Cox compared the current moment to the late 1960s, when several political assassinations rocked the nation. Today, however, brings the added complication of social media, which Cox said has helped fuel anger and has brought the violence to the forefront of the conversation in a new way.

He again encouraged people to put their phones down, calling social media a "cancer on our society right now."

Speaking with NBC on Sunday's edition of "Meet the Press," Cox tripled down on his disdain for social media.

"I believe that social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last five, six years," Cox said.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

Related topics

Charlie Kirk killingArtificial IntelligenceUtahPolice & CourtsScience

Logan Stefanich

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Logan Stefanich is a reporter with KSL.com, covering southern Utah communities, education, business and tech news.