STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Did Elon Musk tweet "Anyone caught promoting propaganda will be suspended from X?" No, that's not true: There is no record that the owner of X, formerly Twitter, ever posted this message on his official X account @ElonMusk, according to a search of the site. Had he made such a statement, it would be easily found and news outlets would have covered his decision.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on September 7, 2024. It said:
Motherfu*ker PLEASE! You promote Russian Propaganda!
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Sep 11 19:18:46 2024 UTC)
A search of X (archived here) for Musk and the quote yielded no matching results, as this screenshot shows:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Sep 12 9:53:41 2024 UTC)
The posted image of Musk's supposed words did not show the date or time that he posted the message, unlike usual shared tweets. There also were no replies to this purported Musk message, as the X search above shows.
A Google search (archived here) of keywords returned no credible reports that Musk had made the posted statement. Had he done so, it would have been national and international news.
The fact-checking agency Snopes also debunked this claim.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Elon Musk can be read here.
Updates:
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2024-09-12T09:45:49Z 2024-09-12T09:45:49Z An earlier version of this fact check had a typo in the X search query which has been updated.
