Did Elon Musk reveal plans to buy CBS after Feb. 20? No. The claim appeared on a Facebook page aimed at American and European audiences but produced in Vietnam. It is part of a clickbait operation that uses AI tools described by some fact-checkers as "Viet Spam." The article claims Musk made the announcement on X, but there is no evidence he did so. The same false claim made previously had cited a Jan. 20 announcement date, which passed without such an announcement.
The claim appeared in a Feb. 12, 2026, post on Facebook account @TheDailyScope (archived here) . It opened:
BREAKING: Elon Musk reveals plans to buy CBS after February 20, promising a radical shift. "I will remove wokeness from the network," he declares, setting the stage for a dramatic transformation in broadcast television. 📎Read the full story in the comments.👇
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at facebook.com/TheDailyScope.)
The claim was part of a pattern of clickbait using AI tools to produce fake stories described by some fact-checkers as "Viet spam." Multiple pages repeat the claim, including versions that cited Jan. 20 as the date Musk was supposed to buy CBS, as these Facebook posts show (archived here).
The Facebook page that published the fictional story about Musk revealing a plan to buy CBS is managed from Vietnam, according to Meta's transparency data (archived here), as this screenshot shows:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at facebook.com/TheDailyScope transparency page.)
The Vietnam connection is significant, since fact-checkers, including Lead Stories, have identified a major source of AI-generated false stories coming from a single operation based in that Southeast Asian country. You can see recent reporting and fact checks mentioning that country here.
The post includes a link to an article (archived here) that claims a "tweet that quickly went viral," by Musk, with him quoted as writing, "Legacy media has lost its way." Lead Stories searched X (archived here) for the quote by Musk and did not find any matches, as this screenshot shows:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com.)
Had Musk announced he was planning to buy CBS it would have been newsworthy, given his stature as one of the wealthiest humans on earth and CBS' stature in broadcast news. Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo! News (archived here) and did not find any legitimate news reports about the purchase.
