Fact check: Claim about Elon Musk and Facebook originated as satire
📷 Key players Meteor shower up next 📷 Leaders at the dais 20 years till the next one
FACT CHECK
fact-checking

Fact check: Elon Musk did not offer to buy and delete Facebook

McKenzie Sadeghi
USA TODAY

The claim: Elon Musk offered to buy and delete Facebook

Since 2016, when a SpaceX rocket exploded during a launchpad test and destroyed a Facebook satellite it was carrying, billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have had an ongoing feud.

Some on social media are claiming Musk, who has repeatedly criticized Facebook, offered to purchase the platform so he could permanently get rid of it.

"Elon Musk Offers To Buy And Then Delete Facebook," reads the screenshot of an article's headline shared to Facebook on Aug. 5. A meme saying "He is the chosen one" is displayed below the text.

"I love him," the user captioned the post, which has more than 1,000 reactions and was posted to the Elon Musk group page. 

A similar version of the claim was shared Aug. 4 in a Facebook post with more than 2,000 reactions. 

But this claim is false, originating from a work of satire.

Fact check:Billie Eilish did not say she wanted to be poor so she could relate to fans

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook users who shared the post for comment. 

Claim started as satire in 2018

The headline in the posts comes from a March 30, 2018, article from the satirical website Alternative Science. It was written by comedian and co-founder of The Political Garbage Chute, James Schlarmann.

"Alternative Science is the World Wide Internet's premier and most trusted location for alternative facts and embracing your feelings," reads the website's "About" section on Facebook. "Whether or not the facts shared by us are 'true' doesn't matter – only what we feel should be true does."

At the time, the article was making a joke out of Musk's decision to delete the Tesla and SpaceX pages from Facebook. The article tells a fictional story about Musk speaking to investors about purchasing the social media network to "do humanity a favor." 

The screenshots shared to Facebook do not include any disclaimer that the article is satire, indicating some social media users believed it was an authentic report.

It's an example of what could be called "stolen satire," where stories written as satire and presented that way originally are captured via screenshot and reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, as was the case here.

In March 2018, Musk said the platform gives him "the willies," and in February 2020, he tweeted, "#DeleteFacebook it's lame."

Fact check: Video misrepresents Biden's words on decades of vaccine research

Our rating: False

The claim that Musk offered to buy and delete Facebook is FALSE, based on our research. The claim originated on a satirical website in 2018, and it was authored by a comedian. The article was riffing on Musk deleting his SpaceX and Tesla pages from Facebook.

Our fact-check sources: 

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app, or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

Featured Weekly Ad