Elon Musk slams Facebook for ‘manipulating the public almost everywhere on Earth’

X owner Elon Musk on Wednesday accused Facebook of “manipulating the public” in the latest escalation in the ongoing war of words with his possible “cage match” foe Mark Zuckerberg.

Musk shredded Zuckerberg in response to an exposé by Sky News Australia, which alleged in a sweeping report that Meta-owned Facebook has been bankrolling a fact-checking operation that has purportedly censored political content ahead of a key Australian referendum.

“Facebook is manipulating the public almost everywhere on Earth,” Musk wrote on his rebranded site formerly known as Twitter. “That is why they won’t open source their algorithm.”

The report claimed the Meta-funded Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology has repeatedly placed fact checks on posts that expressed opinions or views opposed to the creation of a proposed “Voice to Parliament” that would advocate on behalf of indigenous communities in Australia.

“An audit of RMIT Voice fact checks showed the 17 Voice checks between May 3 and June 23 this year were all targeting anti-Voice opinions or views,” the report said.

In 2020, both Facebook and Twitter censored The Post’s exclusive report on Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of that year’s presidential election. Last year, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook was wrong to ban the sharing of the story — and said the suppression occurred after a vague FBI warning about potential “Russian propaganda.”

The rivalry between Musk, 52, and Zuckerberg, 39, has escalated in recent weeks as Meta rolled out Threads, a text-based app that is directly competing with X.

Meta executives billed Threads as a “sanely run” alternative to X, which has rankled advertisers by loosening its content moderation practices.

Ahead of Threads’ launch in July, Musk raised concerns about its privacy policies by sharing a screenshot detailing a list of data that the app would purportedly collect from users, ranging from purchases to search history.

In May, Musk suggested that Meta-owned WhatsApp “cannot be trusted” to protect users while touting Twitter’s plan to support encrypted messaging in the future.

Meta representatives did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment on Musk’s remarks.

Musk “opened-sourced” X’s algorithm by releasing the underlying code for public viewing last April, fulfilling a pledge he made after acquiring the company formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion last April.

At the same time, Musk has faced scrutiny over various moves that critics say are meant to stifle transparency, such as his company’s decision to revoke free access to its API, or application programming interface.

This week, Musk announced that news articles would no longer display their headlines or text when posted on the site.

Musk weighed in on Meta’s alleged role in backing censorship even after X was accused of throttling news outlets by implementing a five-second delay when users tried to click on their articles. X later removed the delay.

Aside from trading jabs about their respective businesses, the two billionaires talked openly about facing off in a “cage match,” though Zuckerberg said earlier this month it was “time to move on” because Musk “isn’t serious” about the fight.