X Platform

Did a "retired sergeant" in Texas say that Muslims have set up a command center with weapons, armored vehicles and a training facility - on top of Muslim-only communities and Sharia courts? No, that's not true: A social media post has misrepresented what a retired training sergeant for the Plano, Texas, police department said during a Collin County Commissioner's Court…

Did two U.S. senators and four representatives urge American soldiers and intelligence officers to disobey legal orders from their commanders and is their advice seditious and traitorous behavior? No, that's not true: Democratic Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, and Representatives Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan recorded a video with the message that American military members "must…

Does a viral clip really show an oxygen tank and a patient on a gurney being sucked from a hallway straight into the bore of an MRI machine? No, that's not true: It's clearly labelled as having been created by Sora, the OpenAI-owned text-to-video tool. The video includes multiple glaring departures from reality: A marked exit door would not lead…

Did President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy invest $500 million or $1.5 billion "of his own money" in "a ski resort in Western Ukraine"? No, that's not true: Social media posts misattribute publicly known investment amounts about such a project. Talking to Lead Stories, the project's developer denied not only Zelenskyy's participation but also the presence of any direct government funding.…

Does Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani have a plan to require all New York students to learn Arabic numerals? No, that's not true: Viral posts making that claim are satirical in nature because Arabic numerals are already widely used everywhere in New York and the rest of the United States. The joke plays on the ignorance of certain audiences not knowing "Arabic…

Does a video show a man standing on the edge of the Chicxulub Crater which was formed when an asteroid slammed into the earth about 66 million years ago? No, that's not true: In follow-up comments under the post, the author says "This is an AI simulation of what it may have look like 66 million years ago". They suggest…

Did prominent Americans like Elon Musk, Caitlin Clark, Stephen Colbert, and Joy Behar each pay down $667,000 of schoolkids' lunchroom debts? No, there's no evidence that's true: In the case of FBI Director Kash Patel, the gift was inflated to $979,000, which would be more than five times his FBI salary.The posts making the claims include no evidence by which…

Was Mark Epstein referring to a horse named "Bubba" in an email to his brother Jeffrey Epstein when he wrote "Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba"? No, that's not true: A spokesperson for Mark Epstein told Lead Stories in a phone call the 2018 message was not about a horse. The claim that it was…

Did a viral video really show dead bodies moving on their own in a morgue? No, that's not true: The video, showing four different scenes of bodies appearing to move their legs as four different women sat next to them writing some kind of report or doing paperwork, had the typical glitches of footage generated using artificial intelligence. A specialized…

Is a video of U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, saying he voted to keep the government shut down because he could never say no to Chuck Schumer, real? No, that's not true: A small disclaimer at the bottom of the video acknowledges that it was made by an artificial intelligence tool. The video, which was shared on the…