Is "Tech world on fire" over news that Elon Musk bought Facebook in order to "delete it"? No, that's not true: Meta (which owns Facebook) had not, as of this writing, announced or documented a sale, as is required of publicly traded companies. Lead Stories found no credible news reports of an impending sale to Musk. The site that generated the rumor is one of the "Viet Spam" operators Lead Stories has exposed in 2025 for attracting web traffic by spreading scandalous and shocking rumors about prominent Americans in fake news stories.
The rumor originated in a Dec. 7, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) on the "News Update" page under the headline "Tech world on fire as Elon Musk reportedly pulls off the most shocking move in internet history:" It continued:
He bought Facebook -- just to delete it.
Not to fix it.
Not to merge it.
Not to profit from it.
To destroy it.
This is what an illustration near the bottom of the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at www.facebook.com/groups/282147663750934.)
The post continued:
Insiders say Musk called Facebook "a psychological parasite" and "the biggest mind-control experiment ever built." His mission?
"End it."
Behind closed doors, Meta's board allegedly approved a quiet takeover. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus stay with Meta -- but Facebook itself now belongs to Musk.
And according to multiple engineers, his first command was terrifyingly simple:
Shut it down.
A secret internal plan -- Operation Clean Slate -- is already underway:
servers locked
algorithms frozen
ad systems disabled
data being archived
shutdown prep in motion
One whistleblower said:
"This isn't a redesign. He's deleting it. All of it."
The world instantly split in two.
Panic:
billions of photos at risk
businesses losing their lifeline
politicians scrambling
families terrified of losing memories
Celebration:
privacy advocates cheering
parents relieved
critics calling it "digital liberation"
If Musk follows through, Facebook could disappear within days -- the biggest online disruption the internet has ever seen.
Hero?
Villain?
Or visionary burning the old world to force a new one?
One thing is certain:
If Facebook really goes dark... nothing about the online world will ever be the same again.
No SEC Records
Publicly traded companies like X (Musk's company) and Meta, the company that owns Facebook, are required by federal law to announce major events like changes in ownership (archived here), using a Securities and Exchange Commission Form 8-K. Securities and Exchange Commission public records on file (archived here) did not include any 8-K forms about such a sale as of Dec. 8, 2025.
The "Investors" page on Meta's website, (archived here) as of Dec. 8, 2025, included no mention of an impending sale of the company. Federal law says events that would have a material impact on stockholders must be disclosed.
No Credible News Reports
Similarly, Lead Stories searched Google News' index of thousands of news sites (archived here) for any reporting by the tech press. No credible report was found, though Musk and Zuckerberg's business moves are instantly newsworthy by virtue of their places in the top 10 of the Forbes list of Earth's wealthiest humans (archived here).
Contradictory Information About Page's Home Base
The News Update Facebook page gave its address as 999 20th St NW, Ste 400, Washington, DC, a crowded downtown site near Georgetown University and The White House. A search using the address does not bring up News Update, but the first result for that address is the nearby Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
The page transparency information for News Update shows it is operated from Vietnam, Bangladesh and India:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of transparency section of News Update page on Facebook.)
Other posts on the page contain fake stories about Elon Musk launching a Tesla phone, Tesla houses, Tesla motorhomes and injecting himself in current events such as the grieving over murdered political activist Charlie Kirk.
The page's characteristics were consistent with "Viet spam" networks of accounts active in 2025 and spreading false claims, often accompanied by AI-generated text and images, with the goal to pursue ad income driven by the number of views.
This type of spam quickly spread on Facebook after the platform's owner, Meta, abruptly ended (archived here) its third-party fact-checking program in 2025 in the U.S. Lead Stories participated, along with other fact-checking newsrooms. By the end of the same year, Lead Stories documented over 50 cases of the most viral false claims that fall under the umbrella of "Viet spam".
