Technology

Does the orange dot on the iPhone mean someone is listening to you or spying on you? No, that's missing context: A cyber security expert told Lead Stories the orange circle is a warning from Apple that the microphone is being used by an app on the phone, but that does not mean that anyone is listening to you or…

Did Elon Musk file a billion dollars in lawsuits against "totally unprepared" Kathy Griffin? No, that's not true: The site that posted the story and a "Fact Check" follow-up is satirical. There are clearly marked disclaimers on the website that state everything on the site is a satirical work of fiction. The claim appeared as an article (archived here) where…

Did a young engineer named Christian discover a way to make cars more fuel efficient, but get fired from his job after telling his managers? Did he then develop a chip that will calibrate a car's fuel usage? No, that's not true: Much of this video footage was lifted from a YouTube video promoting the University of Huddersfield. The young…

Was former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal arrested for possessing child pornography? No, that's not true: The article is from a satirical website and is completely made up. It was originally published without a satire label but has been updated to note that it is an "obvious satire article." The claim appeared in an article published by Vancouver Times on December…

Is a "young whizkid" inventor shown in a social media video despised by electric companies for creating a device that "cuts 50% off an average home's power bill"? No, that's not true: The young man shown in the video is an inventor but not of some purported power-saving gadget called FusionWatt. Instead, he's working on mind-reading technology that would allow…

Did Twitter remove "over 44,000 Twitter pages involved with child sexual exploitation -- in just India alone" since Elon Musk took over the company? No, that's not true: Such large numbers came from global totals, not from India alone. Also, while the implication in the post is that such numbers began with Musk's takeover of Twitter, available information shows it…

Did Twitter CEO Elon Musk purchase former President Donald Trump's Truth Social in December 2022? No, that's not true: A video shared on Facebook claimed in the headline that Musk had bought the social media platform, but a voiceover narration in the video made no mention of such an event. The headline was merely clickbait. At the time of writing,…

Does a video shared on social media show an authentic "human clone robot factory"? No, that's not true: The video shared on Instagram and Facebook in December 2022 showed a prosthetics studio used in the making of props for television and movies, as documents featured in the clip prove. The claim originated on Instagram on December 17, 2022, in a…

Did Tesla launch a new cryptocurrency that will rapidly turn a £200 ($240) investment into thousands in just days? No, that's not true: This deceptive ad is not associated with Tesla. Although Tesla has invested in cryptocurrency, and Dogecoin can be used to buy some Tesla products, the automotive-energy company owned by Twitter CEO Elon Musk has not created a…

Did Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweet that Tesla, his electric-vehicle and sustainable-energy company, was forced to recall its entire fleet? No, that's not true: The tweet was posted by a parody account impersonating Musk, the CEO of Tesla. The parody tweet (archived here) was published on December 22, 2022. It read: Tesla has just been informed by the NHTSA that…

Does a video of satellite imagery showing what a post describes as a "massive underwater wall" stretching from "pole to pole" prove that the Earth is flat? No, that's not true: A video of Google Earth seafloor mapping data depicted in the post shows what's known to mapping analysts as a "digital seam," or a location of the ocean floor…

Were the FBI payments to Twitter, documented in what's known as Part 7 of the "Twitter Files", compensation for censoring? No, that's not true: The evidence provided shows the payments were reimbursement for costs associated with the company's work responding to information requests from the FBI. Claims that the FBI was paying for content moderation are false, according to a…

Does this image show an unidentified boy in the care of police officers after being found "roaming around"? No, that's not true: The boy in the picture actually helped locate someone else -- an older man with Alzheimer's disease. The posts are a part of a common deceptive method of spamming to advertise real estate in local areas. The claim…

Did the Food and Drug Administration report that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine "causes" blood clots? No, that's not true: In remarks to Lead Stories, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated that the vaccine meets its safety standards and denied that the agency had found that the vaccine causes health problems. The authors of a recent study, conducted in part…

Did Elon Musk tweet, "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" on December 16, 2022, the day after several journalists were banned from Twitter? No, that's not true: This screenshot of a tweet,…

Did Elon Musk just launch the "terrifying hypersonic T-Jet to beat Russia"? No, that's not true: There is zero evidence to support the claim. Musk's private rocket company made no such announcement, and the video making the allegation is at least 8 months old. There are no credible reports of the alleged launch, which would have been front-page news if…

Did a Facebook video reveal that Elon Musk leaked information that proves President Joe Biden is "mortally sick"? No, that's not true: This video has a clickbait title and does not say Musk has inside information that Biden is ill. There are also no news articles about Musk revealing information about Biden's health. The claim appeared on Facebook on December…

Is the digital bank GO2Bank giving new customers a sign-up bonus of $1,000? No, that's not true: A representative of the owner of the GO2Bank brand, Green Dot Corporation, told Lead Stories that this alleged sign-up bonus is not a GO2Bank offer, and that the links found in the post promising the bonus do not go to the bank's official…

Is there a facility that can produce 30,000 lab-grown human babies per year from embryos incubated in artificial wombs? No, that's not true: A video that depicts "the world's first Artificial Womb Facility" is a promotional advertisement for a "concept" by Hashem Al-Ghaili, who describes himself as "a producer, filmmaker and science communicator" and a "molecular biologist by trade." Though…

Has television personality and bounty hunter Duane Lee Chapman, also known as "Dog the Bounty Hunter," passed away as of December 13, 2022? No, that's not true: Chapman's publicist told Lead Stories on December 13, 2022, that he is "alive and well." The claim appeared in a video on Facebook on December 11, 2022. The caption read: Reality TV actor…