Did Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ban Tesla CEO Elon Musk from Facebook? Has Musk responded to Zuckerberg's alleged statement? No, neither of those are true: This claim comes from a satirical website and was originally posted in March 2023 labeled as satire before it was republished, without the satire label, in August 2023. Lead Stories could not find any evidence…
Did the Italian government offer Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg the Colosseum as a location for their fight? No, that's not true: A spokesperson of the Italian Ministry of Culture told Lead Stories that no related paperwork existed to substantiate that claim. The article that started the rumor about the supposed location of the fight was updated to include a…
Did the state of Ohio introduce a new death penalty procedure that "quickly and humanely rips off the heads of death row inmates using powerful robotic arms"? No, that's not true: This spoof news video is from ONN, the Onion News Network -- the video branch of theonion.com, a satire news website. The two-minute-long spoof news video titled "Ohio Replaces…
Does 5G cause nosebleeds, cancer in the brain, low sperm count, headaches or insomnia? No, that's not true: A video offers no proof of the claims made about the wireless technology. While the long-term effects of 5G technology are still being researched, numerous public health agencies have determined that it does not present a health risk to people in general.…
Does a video posted on social media show a newscast with real journalists describing Mark Zuckerberg as a CIA agent and Facebook as a CIA surveillance replacement program? No, that's not true: The original video and audio heard in this post were produced more than a decade ago by the Onion News Network (ONN), part of a satirical news website.…
On November 10, 2021, Lead Stories published a fact check about an article published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on November 2, 2021. In response, the BMJ published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg on December 17, 2021, calling our fact check "inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible." We addressed their concerns in a December 18, 2021, article, going over their…
Was a video game named "Omikron: The Nomad Soul" created by Bill Gates, and does it have any ties to the emergence of the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus? No, that's not true: Although the game was originally made to be used with a Microsoft Windows operating system, it was not created by Gates. Other claims about the…
Is a meme correct in implying vaccination ("the shot") is not working to prevent COVID-19? No, that's not true: Since it uses an image of a comedian's fictional rapper character, "Ali G," it may be satire. But the apparent reference to vaccinated people still getting sick ignores the fact that the point of vaccination campaigns is to sharply limit the…
Does this meme accurately represent the relationships of several CEOs to the products of their respective companies? This tweet from 2019 contains a mixture of true, false, unverified and misleading statements. This screenshot meme originated with a tweet posted on November 22, 2019. It resurfaced in a post on Facebook on June 27, 2021, captioned only, "Question everything." The text…
Lead Stories is a U.S. based fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or
inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
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