Technology

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…

Did Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, tweet about "Elon Musk's suicide" in response to the Twitter CEO releasing corporate discussions, now known as "The Twitter Files," about Twitter's removal of content or blocking accounts? No, that's not true: Lead Stories could not find the tweet on Clinton's verified Twitter account or its…

Does a sudden decrease in the displayed vote tally for U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker during Fox News coverage of Georgia's December 6, 2022, runoff election prove that voter fraud occurred? No, that's not true: Human error by the Associated Press (AP), the news organization that provides voting data for multiple networks, including Fox News, was responsible for the change…

Did a generator made out of magnets and a battery lead to an astonishing discovery that breaks the laws of physics? No, that's not true: A perpetual motion machine would violate the laws of thermodynamics. Two Australian inventors claimed they had developed a method to power homes for free in an interview on Sky News Australia that aired in 2008.…

Was a "Black Mona Lisa" discovered in a 3-mile-long spacecraft on the moon's dark side? No, that's not true: The origin story of this claim is based on a science fiction novel that some people have falsely suggested reflects an accurate representation of a secret lunar landing dubbed Apollo 20. The story's creator has publicly stated that the Apollo 20…

Does this video compilation of Yuval Noah Harari, a best-selling author and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, show him celebrating plans for dystopian mass surveillance? No, that's not true: Harari often warns that humankind is at risk of being dominated by surveillance and artificial intelligence. He speaks and writes about these threats and does not welcome or…

Did WikiLeaks in December of 2022 release Apollo 11 "moon landing cut scenes filmed in Nevada desert," proving that the moon landing never happened and was instead staged for filming right here on Earth? No, that's not true: The video in this post splices together a scene from a 1977 fictional movie, which was not even filmed in Nevada, and…

The celebrity death hoax has long been a clickbait staple, but recently one network has taken it to extremes, using scores of websites to host its content and an automated army of bots to push the links into Facebook groups. Many Facebook users and group administrators have noticed a sharp increase in spam postings of false death hoaxes. Examples of…

Did Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' office contact Twitter to have posts removed to censor political opponents? No, that's not true: Hobbs' office asked the Center for Internet Security in 2021 to alert Twitter about an account that was making false claims about the state's voter information database. The tweets that were flagged had nothing to do with the…

Did Switzerland ban electric vehicles "due to their excessive energy use" on December 7, 2022? No, that's not true: The country only discussed a draft of legislation that suggested that electric car use might be limited to essential activities such as driving to work or visiting doctors -- but only in the hypothetical case of the most serious energy supply…

Was Wuhan, China the first city to be "covered" with 5G technology and did this wireless communications network facilitate the origination and spread of COVID-19? No, that's not true: A telecommunications expert told Lead Stories that credible evidence for this claim does not exist. The timing of Wuhan's 5G technology rollout and the coronavirus pandemic is coincidental and no direct…

Did Albert Bourla, the chairman and CEO of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company, "maintain" that mRNA vaccine technology was unsafe when he gave researchers the go-ahead to use it in Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: In the full 2022 Washington Post interview from which this claim is derived, Bourla did not say that mRNA was unsafe. He said that…