Fabricated Elon Musk tweet about journalists shared online
Fabricated Elon Musk tweet about journalists shared online
(Reuters) - A screenshot purporting to show a tweet about journalists published by Twitter CEO Elon Musk has misled some social media users online.
The image appears to show a tweet sent via Musk’s official Twitter account (@elonmusk) on Dec. 16, 2022, which reads: “You know, in some parts of the world, journalists get murdered for crossing the wrong people. Banning the reporters I don’t like from my own platform feels like a pretty innocuous alternative to me.”
Examples of the image shared online can be viewed (here), (here) and (here).
However, no tweet was published by Musk.
The fabricated screenshot was shared after Twitter suspended and subsequently reinstated several high-profile journalists’ accounts over claims that they revealed Musk’s real-time location while reporting on a Twitter account (@ElonJet) that routinely shared the location of Musk’s private plane using publicly available information (here).
A Twitter advanced search did not reveal any such tweet published via Musk’s account (archive.vn/wip/i4v4l).
The supposed tweet cannot be seen via an archive of deleted tweets compiled by PolitiTweet (here).
A Google advanced search did not reveal any news report on the supposed tweet (archive.vn/wip/rQ01S).
The earliest iteration Reuters found of the screenshot was uploaded on Dec. 16 to a Reddit thread and labeled as a fabricated satirical post (archive.vn/7Ykgv).
A representative for Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
VERDICT
False. No such tweet was published by Musk.
