In the weeks leading up to the 2022 midterm elections, few things felt more fragile than the American information ecosystem. It was in that charged atmosphere that Jessica Tarlov, one of the few liberal voices on Fox News’ The Five, offered a warning that cut through the usual cable-news chatter. She wasn’t talking about attack ads or gaffes. She was talking about the richest man in the world and the social media platform he had just purchased. Tarlov warned that Elon Musk would play an outsize role in spreading misinformation before voters went to the polls, and she didn’t sugarcoat her anxiety. For anyone who had watched Twitter transform from a playful microblogging site into the central nervous system of American politics, her concern made sense. Twitter is where news breaks, where journalists find stories, where politicians test messages, and where millions of ordinary voters come to feel the pulse of the country. It is also a place where lies can multiply faster than reality checks. Tarlov’s point was simple but profound: when the person owning the platform openly embraces “free speech absolutism” and dismisses content moderation as censorship, the consequences are not abstract. They show up in the form of confused voters, suppressed ballots, and a public that no longer knows what to believe.
What made Tarlov’s warning stand out was not just her tone, but the timing. The midterms were approaching, and election administrators across the country were already bracing for a wave of false claims about voting machines, mail-in ballots, polling stations, and the integrity of the results themselves. Tarlov pointed out that Musk had already made moves that worried her: talking about restoring banned accounts, gutting trust and safety teams, and suggesting that Twitter should be a “digital town square” where almost anything could be said. In theory, that sounds noble. In practice, she argued, it opens the floodgates to precisely the kind of election-related misinformation that had fueled the January 6 insurrection and the “Stop the Steal” movement. She said she was “really worried” about the role Musk would play, and she urged people to think carefully about the difference between legitimate free expression and allowing dangerous falsehoods to spread without consequence. It was not a partisan attack on Musk as a person. It was a sober assessment of what happens when a platform that shapes the national conversation is run by someone who seems to believe that the solution to misinformation is simply more speech. The problem is that not all speech is created equal, and not every falsehood gets corrected by a reply thread. By the time the truth arrives, the lie has already been screenshotted, shared, and absorbed.
To understand Tarlov’s anxiety, you have to appreciate what Musk’s takeover of Twitter actually looked like in real time. He bought the platform for billions of dollars and immediately started making changes that signaled a dramatic shift in priorities. He fired top executives, dissolved the board, and laid off a significant portion of the workforce, including people whose job it was to review harmful content and keep the platform safe. He called himself “Chief Twit,” joked about buying the company, and promised to make Twitter more open. But to many observers, the openness looked a lot like chaos. Advertisers paused their spending, worried about their brands appearing next to offensive or misleading posts. Researchers reported spikes in hate speech and harassment. Dozens of high-profile figures who had been banned for peddling lies or inciting violence suddenly found themselves back on the platform. Musk insisted he was doing the right thing, that he was restoring trust by giving people more freedom. But Tarlov’s warning was that freedom without guardrails is not freedom at all—it’s just a different kind of cage, one where voters are locked in with the loudest and most dishonest voices. She didn’t say Musk wanted misinformation to win. She said he didn’t seem to understand that a platform built on engagement is structurally wired to amplify outrage. And in the final weeks of an election, outrage is fertilizer for lies.
Elections are messy enough without a mega-platform turning up the heat. Think about what a typical voter has to do: register, receive a ballot or find a polling place, figure out identification rules, understand deadlines, and then cast a vote that they hope will be counted. Now imagine doing all of that while being bombarded with viral posts saying the election is rigged, that ballots sent by mail are invalid, that polls close earlier than they actually do, or that voting machines are secretly flipping votes. That is the reality Tarlov was trying to describe with her warning. She noted that Twitter is not just a casual space for celebrities and politicians; it is where journalists live, where election officials announce updates, and where ordinary people go to see what is happening in real time. If Musk allows misinformation to run rampant, she argued, the people who suffer most are not the pundits or the wealthy donors—they’re the poll workers, the local clerks, the volunteers trying to help people vote, and the everyday citizens who simply want to participate in democracy without being gaslit. The 2020 election was already a stress test for this system, and it nearly broke. Tarlov’s fear was that 2022 would be worse because the guardrails that had been strengthened after the last cycle were being deliberately removed by someone who seemed to view them as unnecessary and elitist.
But Tarlov’s warning was also deeply human in a way that goes beyond politics. She was speaking to a country that is exhausted, anxious, and increasingly unable to agree on basic facts. Misinformation is not just a policy problem; it is an emotional one. It preys on fear, impatience, and the human desire to be the one who knows the truth and shares it first. A lie about a voting machine can trigger an immediate reaction: anger, distrust, a sense that the system is rigged. And once that feeling takes hold, a correction feels like an attack, not an explanation. Tarlov, as a Democrat on a conservative network, understood this better than most. She spent years sitting next to people who disagreed with her, trying to find a way to talk across the divide. Her warning about Musk was not a lecture from the ivory tower. It was the voice of someone who has watched how quickly good-faith conversation can turn into hostile tribalism. She was not asking anyone to hate Elon Musk. She was asking them to be honest about what happens when the world’s most influential public square is left unmanaged during a moment when millions of people are making life-or-death decisions about who will represent them. You don’t need to believe Musk is evil to believe he is dangerous. You just need to recognize that good intentions are not a substitute for accountability.
In the end, Tarlov’s warning is a reminder that democracy is not a machine that runs itself. It requires care, attention, and a shared commitment to something resembling the truth. The midterms came and went, and the predicted catastrophe did not fully arrive—or at least, it didn’t arrive in the way some people feared. But the underlying danger did not disappear. It evolved. Social media platforms continue to shape what we see, what we believe, and how we vote. If there is a lesson to take from Tarlov’s anxiety, it is that we cannot rely on billionaires, algorithms, or even well-meaning tech executives to protect our democracy. We have to do the unglamorous work ourselves: checking sources before we share, trusting official election officials over random Twitter accounts, and having patience with our neighbors when they have been misled. That is not glamorous, and it does not generate clicks. But it is the only real defense against the tidal wave of misinformation that will keep coming with every election cycle. Jessica Tarlov’s warning was not a prophecy; it was an invitation to think. In a world where the richest man can buy the biggest megaphone and then decide what gets amplified, ordinary people have to become more careful, more curious, and more willing to hold onto reality. That may sound like a lot to ask. But the alternative—letting a feed full of lies decide who gets to vote and whether that vote counts—is far more frightening. Democracy deserves more than a shrug. It deserves our attention, our skepticism, and our stubborn refusal to be fooled.