Did Beyoncé declare she would no longer perform in "red states," meaning states that went for President-elect Donald Trump? No, that's not true: This comes from a website that publishes fake stories about famous people. The site describes itself as satire, and the original article was clearly labeled as satire.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on November 10, 2024. The caption read:
Beyoncé Announces Red State Boycott 'I Won't Perform in Those States'
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Nov 12 17:39:13 2024 UTC)
The first comment on the post linked to the original article (archived here) about Beyoncé's supposed decision to skip red states on her next tour. It appeared on a website called Esspots on November 10, 2024. The two topic tags below the headline both read "SATIRE." This is what the tags, highlighted in red by Lead Stories, looked like:
(Source: Esspots screenshot taken on Tue Nov 12 18:24:51 2024 UTC)
On its "About Us" page (archived here), Esspots explicitly tells readers not to take its stories seriously:
Welcome to the US page of Esspots (A Subsidiary of SpaceXMania.com specializing in Satire and Parody News), your one-stop destination for satirical news and commentary about the United States of America. Our team of writers and editors is dedicated to bringing you the latest and greatest in fake news and absurdity, all with a healthy dose of humor and satire.
Still, some social media users have reposted or rehashed Esspots' claim about Beyoncé following the original article's publication, without noting its satirical label -- for example, here (archived here), here (archived here), here (archived here) and here (archived here).
Lead Stories ran the Esspots piece through Hive Moderation, an online artificial intelligence-detection tool, which found it was 99.9 percent "likely to contain AI Generated Text."
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Tue Nov 12 18:32:58 2024 UTC)
Claims that Beyoncé would no longer sing in states that voted for Trump were circulating online before Esspots published its piece. For example, a Facebook user posted on November 9, 2024, that "Taylor Swift might join Beyonce and other music artists who plan to stop performing in Red States" (archived here).
Lead Stories conducted a keyword search on Google to look for evidence that Beyoncé had announced such a decision on or after Election Day on November 5, 2024 (archived here). The results yielded nothing to support the claim. The search did turn up copies of the claim on other social media platforms, as well as other fact checks debunking it.
Lead Stories contacted Beyoncé's publicist and her management company and will update this story if they reply.
Lead Stories debunked a similar claim concerning Taylor Swift, which can be read here.
More fact checks on false claims involving Esspots can be found here. Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving Beyoncé can be found here. Our fact checks of claims about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
