Category: Fact Check

What looks like a segment on a South African news channel follows a familiar script to dupe social media users into thinking X owner Elon Musk is enabling an entire country of people to stop working and get rich. 

“Residents of South Africa no longer need to work,” an SABC News anchor appears to say in a video that appeared in an Oct. 30 Facebook post. “Such a statement was made by Elon Musk as he opens access to his new development which generates money automatically using artificial intelligence as a trader.”

The video then cuts to Musk.

“I am providing access to my platform for my fellow countrymen where I come from,” Musk appears to say. “To get the system up and running, a minimum investment of 4,700 rand is required. This is the minimum amount at which the system will start making profitable trades in the stock and cryptocurrency markets. To gain access, you need to register on the official website, wait for a manager’s call who will assist you in the subsequent steps, including account funding and program setup.”

Text at the bottom of the screen says, “How to start with 4700R and make passively 370000R monthly?” and “South African is shocked by Elon Musk’s statement.” 

The Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Musk was born in South Africa, but we found no evidence to support the claims in this video, which was altered. 

The original footage of Musk comes from an April Fox News interview in which he discussed artificial intelligence, but didn’t make a sweeping promise to South Africans that hinged on some supposed money-making platform. 

“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production,” Musk said in the original interview. 

In August, we fact-checked a similar post that included an altered video in which a news anchor appeared to say: “All British residents no longer need to work. That’s the announcement made by our guest today, Elon Musk, who will unveil a new investment project.” 

Claims that the video was authentic were wrong, and so is this one. We rate this post Pants on Fire!

 

Singers Miranda Lambert and Tim McGraw have previously been the targets of false advertising that uses their celebrity to promote supposed weight loss products. Now a fellow star, Kelly Clarkson, has come in diet scammers’ crosshairs with a deepfake video that puts words in her mouth. 

“Hello, this is Kelly Clarkson, and I want to share something incredible with you,” singer Kelly Clarkson appears to say in the video shared Oct. 25 on Facebook. “As you know, I’ve always strived to stay fit and take care of my health. Recently, I’ve started using a product from a renowned pharmaceutical company and I’ve been absolutely amazed by the results. I recently discussed this product and my transformation journey in detail during my appearance on the ‘Today Show.’ Simply click the link below this video to learn more about the product.” 

The Facebook post sharing this video — and the link — were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

This video was altered. The original, shared June 23 by Clarkson on Instagram, shows the singer promoting her new album, “Chemistry.”

She doesn’t mention her weight loss product or a “renowned pharmaceutical industry.”

Clicking the link in the post led to a page designed to look like a Facebook page and a post from Clarkson’s Facebook account. In reality, the url — conlineteam.com — signals that this isn’t a Facebook page. The supposed Oct. 31 post from Clarkson’s account is fabricated and doesn’t appear on her account.

Clarkson’s publicist further told The Associated Press that Clarkson isn’t a spokesperson for any weight loss products or programs.

We rate claims this video is authentic False.

 

 

A viral Oct. 28 social media post claimed that “Israel lied to justify genocide,” and cited Israeli newspaper Haaretz as evidence. 

“Haaretz investigation reveals discrepancies in Israel’s reporting on October 7th death toll,” said a screenshot of a headline shared on Instagram as the first in a carousel of slides. 

The second slide said a Haaretz investigation “confirmed that the actual number of casualties from the events on Oct. 7” is 900. 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)  

(Screenshot from Instagram.)

Searching for the headline from the Instagram post turned up an Oct. 28 article on eHalal.io, the website for eHalal Group, a company that describes itself as Washington, D.C.-based and “dedicated to providing a range of services and solutions centered around the concept of halal.” Halal, in Arabic, means lawful or permitted and refers to what’s sanctioned under Islamic law. 

The eHalal Group article did not link to any Haaretz stories.   

Others made the same claim. Jackson Hinkle, a pro-Russia and pro-Trump social media personality, claimed in an Oct. 28 X post that Haaretz’s reporting “exposed” that Israeli officials had inflated the Oct. 7 death toll when it was actually around 900. 

Haaretz reshared Hinkle’s post on X and wrote: “This post contains blatant lies about the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. It has absolutely no basis in Haaretz’s reporting, then or since.” 

Haaretz is a Tel Aviv, Israel-based daily newspaper. Its website says it was founded by Zionist immigrants and has a “a broadly liberal outlook both on domestic issues and on international affairs.”

PolitiFact found no evidence that Haaretz revealed “discrepancies” in Israel’s reporting of the death toll, as the claim says. We contacted Haaretz for comment but received no reply. 

In the attack’s early hours, Haaretz reported that “at least 250 Israelis were killed and over 1,600 were wounded throughout the day.” On Oct. 10, Haaretz reported that “over 900 Israelis have been killed since the initial Hamas attack.” By Oct. 11, the newspaper reported that at least 1,200 Israelis had been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

An Oct. 17 Haaretz report examined what was then known about the attack. In that story, Haaretz reported that in the first hours of the war, Hamas “had overcome barriers Israel built on the border, murdering more than 1,300 people and taking at least 199 hostages.” 

Those reported casualties were similar to figures other news outlets reported: 

• The Associated Press reported that 1,300 Israelis were killed.

• NBC News reported that 1,300 Israelis were killed, including 265 soldiers.

• The Guardian reported that as of Oct. 13, 1,300 Israel residents had been killed, including almost 250 soldiers. Most of the dead were killed when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7. 

• The Washington Post reported that 1,400 people were killed in Hamas’ attack and 229 were taken hostage.

When searching Haaretz’s site for the 900 figure, we found a page titled “Israel’s Dead: The Names of Those Killed in Hamas Attacks, Massacres and the Israel-Hamas War.”

The page lists more than 900 “officially confirmed names of Israel’s dead” from the attack on Oct. 7 “and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war.” But that page also said more than 1,300 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed and said the list would be “continuously updated.” 

Our ruling

An Instagram post claimed that a “Haaretz investigation reveals discrepancies in Israel’s reporting on October 7th death toll.”

Haaretz posted on X that the claims about its reporting are “blatant lies.”

Haaretz and other news organizations have consistently reported that during the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas killed around 1,300 Israeli residents.

We rate these claims False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

In 2016, Wisconsin helped to swing the presidential vote for Donald Trump, a Republican. And four years later, it helped swing the vote the other way, for Joe Biden, the Democrat. 

Meanwhile, the state has a supermajority of Republicans in its state Legislature and a Democrat (Tony Evers) in the governor’s mansion.

And in the U.S. Senate, the state has one Republican (Ron Johnson) and one Democrat (Tammy Baldwin).

So, is the state red or blue?

It’s an age-old question that will play out again in 2024, when Wisconsin is expected to be one of a handful of states that could decide the presidential outcome. So, with about a year before that election, we decided to come back to a claim we set aside earlier this year when we first came across it. 

In a May 30, 2023 Politico article about Wisconsin’s political landscape, former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, claimed his own 2010 win was an “exception” and that the state isn’t red or even purple, as many claim. 

“Wisconsin has historically been,” Walker said, “and I think largely continues to be, a blue state.” 

Let’s take a deeper look. 

Wisconsin has a mix of Republican and Democratic leaders

When we asked Walker about the claim, spokesperson Jim Dick replied with a screen shot of a listing of recent U.S. presidential results in Wisconsin, going back to the re-election of Ronald Reagan in 1984. 

Reagan won that election in Wisconsin, but following him was a series of Democrats – Michael Dukakis (1988), Bill Clinton (1992 and 1996), Al Gore (2000), John Kerry (2004) and Barack Obama (2008 and 2012.) Then, of course, came Trump and then Biden.

So yes, Wisconsin has voted for a lot of Democratic presidential candidates in the past four decades. 

But that ignores a key factor – the tightness of the recent races. For instance, four of the last 6 races were decided by less than one percentage point.

When we asked for more information, Dick doubled down on Walker’s claim. 

“While some races have been close, every presidential election since Reagan has favored the Democrat except for one – and that was largely because Hillary Clinton literally ignored the state after she lost the primary,” Dick wrote, referring to 2016.

“The advantage Democrats have in Wisconsin is that they have a large concentration of votes within the urban areas of the state. High turnout in those areas counter the other parts of the state that are strongly Republican, leaning Republican, or toss up. Legislative Republicans have done well in competitive districts which is why they have large margins (in) the state Legislature.” 

Walker undermines his own statement here, describing what, essentially, is a purple Wisconsin. 

Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center, said the situation in the state is not as black and white  … er, blue and red, as Walker claimed. 

“It seems factually incorrect to call Wisconsin a blue state,” he said via email, adding Wisconsin is actually remarkably balanced between Democrats and Republicans.

He called the fact Democrats frequently win the presidential election a “misleading indicator.”

“In addition, during that time Democrats were generally winning the national popular vote,” he said. “Democrats won more votes nationwide in 7 out of the last 8 presidential elections. So it is more accurate to describe Wisconsin (as) representative of national trends in presidential elections.”

Craig Gilbert, who spent 22 years as the Washington Bureau Chief for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and is now a Lubar Fellow at the Marquette Law School, said that it would make more sense to describe Wisconsin as a whole as purple, when you look at elections across the board, state and federal. 

“I don’t know how you get more purple than Wisconsin has been over the past decade. It is true that Democrats have been more successful in big statewide elections in the Trump Era (especially 2018-2023). But Republicans were more successful in the previous period (2010 to 2016),” he said via email. 

“In fact, if you compare how Wisconsin votes for president these days to the national popular vote, Wisconsin is MORE Republican than the nation as a whole, which is hard to square with the idea of it being a ‘blue state.’ (In other words, Wisconsin was decided by less than a point in 2016 and 2020 while Democrats won the national presidential vote by roughly 2 and 4 points respectively.” 

“You can cherry-pick which offices you want to look at and what time frame you want to look at it to make the case that Wisconsin is traditionally blue-leaning or red-leaning,” Gilbert said. “And there is no objective truth to this question. But I honestly don’t know how Wisconsin could have a more ‘purple’ recent history — and present.”

Our ruling

Walker claimed that “Wisconsin has historically…and I think largely continues to be, a blue state.” 

While Wisconsin has voted for more Democratic presidential candidates than Republican presidential candidates in recent history, Wisconsin’s political landscape is much more nuanced, with a Republican supermajority in the Legislature, a Democratic governor and a mix of the parties in Congress. 

So, no, Wisconsin isn’t exactly blue. 

We rate this claim Mostly False. 

 

Let’s clear the air. Do wind turbine components deteriorate in just three to four years? 

A Sept. 25 Facebook post claimed that a “wind farm in Mt. Pulaski” is replacing generators in all its wind towers after just three-and-a-half years.

“So evidently the life span on the generators on these things appears to be just about 3 to 4 years. It takes 12 semi trucks and trailers, A 9 axle 500,000 pound crane, A 100,000 pound crane and 12 pick up trucks to change each generator,” its caption said. “That is a huge amount of diesel fuel being used to maintain these wind towers.”

(Screenshot from Facebook)

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The claim also gained hundreds of likes on X. We found the same text posted on Facebook as far back as May 2022.

Generators typically last 25 to 75 years, experts say

“The claim that a wind turbine generator lasts three to four years is not correct,” Matt Shields, National Renewable Energy Laboratory senior offshore wind analyst, told PolitiFact. 

Wind turbines convert wind energy into mechanical energy, and wind generators convert that to electricity. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said wind turbines typically last 20 years and require routine maintenance every six months.

The Electric Power Research Institute and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory published a June 2023 study that analyzed operational data from existing wind turbines. It showed an average generator annual failure rate of around 1% to 4%, Shields said.

“In other words, there is a 1(%) to 4% chance that the generator fails in any given year during its operation. Converting that to (the) lifetime of the generator corresponds to an average wind turbine generator lasting around 25 – 75 years,” Shields said.

Wind farms usually last around 25 to 30 years, he said, and that lifespan stands to get longer while the industry “learns more about effective operations and maintenance strategies.”

Shields said that all machines, including wind turbines, need maintenance to remain operational. But “just because a machine is being serviced doesn’t mean that it is at the end of its lifetime,” Shields said.

A generator’s life span could be affected by several factors, including frequency and quality of maintenance, quality and maturity of the installed design, and site-specific turbine operational conditions. 

According to the U.S. Wind Turbine Database, as of May 2023, there were four wind turbine projects in Mount Pulaski, Illinois: HillTopper, Whitney Hill, Radford’s Run, and an unknown project in Logan County.

Matt Epting, media and public relations manager for Enel North America, a renewable energy company, told PolitiFact that the photo in the post shows HillTopper. Asked about the claim, the spokesperson said its wind turbine generators typically last around 20 years. 

Enel replaced the gearbox, not generators, in 17 of HillTopper’s turbines in 2022 because of unforeseen and rare defects in equipment provided by a third-party manufacturer, the spokesperson said.

Christopher Niezrecki, mechanical engineering professor at University of Massachusetts, Lowell, said components that are damaged due to weather or that wear prematurely because of defects would need repairs and replacements.

“Some generators and gearboxes and other components do need replacement but I have never heard that they need replacement (over) 3-4 years,” Niezrecki said.

Niezrecki also pointed out that other forms of energy are “much worse” on a life-cycle basis compared with wind energy. PolitiFact previously reported that a wind turbine generally produces in months, not years, more energy than was needed to manufacture it. ​

Our ruling

A post claimed that wind turbine generators only last three to four years.

But an analysis by energy industry experts found that generators have an average annual failure rate of around 1% to 4%, meaning a typical wind turbine generator lasts around 25 to 75 years.

We rate this claim False.

The Gaza Health Ministry has said the Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war is more than 8,000. But some social media posts are suggesting this number is inflated and are pointing to a video of supposed dead bodies moving as evidence. 

“Wake up world,” text above the video reads. “They think you are fools! The masters of fake news welcome the Palestinians & their Hamas.” 

“7000 my a–,” said one Instagram post sharing the video and apparently referring to a previously reported Palestinian death toll. 

This post among others was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

This video has been online for a decade. An Egypt-based news outlet posted it on YouTube in October 2013. A Google translation of the Arabic caption says that it shows students at Al-Azhar University in Cairo participating in a demonstration. 

“The students chanted slogans against the army and the police,” the translated caption said. 

We rate claims that this video shows Palestinians pretending to be casualties of the current Israel-Hamas war False.

 

A social media post poised to encourage people is unfortunately premised on a faulty claim about an airport service counter catering to people who made one costly and time-consuming mistake.

“If you’re having a bad day,” a recent Instagram post said, “just remember that the airport in Salzburg, Austria, has a counter for people who flew to Austria instead of Australia.” 

It was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The Salzburg Airport didn’t immediately respond to PolitiFact’s questions about the post, but an airport spokesperson told The Washington Post and Swedish publication The Local that no such counter exists. 

“I have never heard of anyone traveling to Salzburg by mistake, when they actually wanted to go to Australia,” Susanne Buchebner, the deputy head of public relations for the airport, told the Post in an email. 

Buchebner also said the rumor stems from an ad run several years ago by Commend, a company selling intercom systems.

A photo of such a Commend ad recently drew more than 2.8 million views on X. 

“Sorry, this is Austria not Australia!” the text in the ad says. “Need help? Please press the button.” 

Beneath this message, in smaller text, reads: “Commend provides security and communication. From Salzburg to the rest of the world. Even for the most unlikely of situations.”

We rate claims that this counter exists False.

Actor Matthew Perry died Oct. 28, setting off a new round of unfounded rumors that a celebrity’s death was caused by a COVID-19 vaccine. 

One Instagram post, sharing a photo of Perry, used hashtags including #clotshotstrikesagain and #vaccineinjury.” Others responded to news of his death by re-sharing along with thinking emojis Perry’s 2021 post expressing support for the vaccine. 

“I mean…” one Instagram user posted. 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Perry, 54, was found dead at his Los Angeles home. But his cause of death is still unknown and pending a medical examiner’s investigation. A Los Angeles Police Department captain told The New York Times that the cause likely will not be determined for some time. 

The Los Angeles Times and TMZ reported, citing unnamed sources, that Perry’s body was found in a hot tub at his home. 

By 49, Perry had spent more than half of his life in rehab, he recounted in “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” a 2022 memoir about his decadeslong addiction to drugs and alcohol. And he had a number of health concerns. 

“His addiction led to a medical odyssey in 2018 that included pneumonia, an exploded colon, a brief stint on life support, two weeks in a coma, nine months with a colostomy bag, more than a dozen stomach surgeries, and the realization that, by the time he was 49, he had spent more than half of his life in treatment centers or sober living facilities,” The New York Times reported in 2022. 

Perry’s family said in a statement to People magazine: “We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of our beloved son and brother. Matthew brought so much joy to the world, both as an actor and a friend.” 

The family didn’t say that Perry died because of a vaccine, nor could we find any credible news reports or other evidence to suggest this was the case. 

If information emerges to corroborate what is now a baseless claim, we’ll reconsider our ruling. For now we rate it False.

The claim is startling: New York’s election results in 2022 might not be trustworthy because there were more votes than voters. 

In a report on the 2022 election, New York Citizens Audit, a group of people who have cast doubt on election administration, claimed there were 35,312 more votes cast than there were voters who voted. 

“Certification of New York’s 2022 general election appears to be a federal crime; a civil rights violation acting under color of law. Why?” the group wrote.  

New York Citizens Audit has questioned the results of the 2020 and 2022 elections in appearances around the state, and its findings have been rebutted by state and county elections officials. 

To arrive at the supposed discrepancy, the report’s authors compared all the votes cast in the U.S. Senate race in 2022, numbering 5,965,684, with the voter roll database that showed who voted in the 2022 election, some 5,930,372 in all. 

The group submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to the state Board of Election for the voter roll.

We asked Marly Hornik, the group’s executive director, about the claim that certification of the results might be unlawful. She said that a U.S. Justice Department publication states that it is misconduct to certify something that is neither accurate nor compliant. “Because every American has a fundamental civil right to an accurate and compliant election, that constitutes a deprivation of rights acting under color of law,” Hornik said. 

The Justice Department publication states broadly that election fraud can involve the counting of ballots and certification of results, and that voters have a right to have their vote counted “fairly and honestly.” But the claim New York Citizens Audit makes, that a ballot count from one dataset should always match up to a voter tally from another data set, is not mentioned in the Justice Department document as an example of voter fraud. 

Another federal document, the Guide to the Canvass, warns against using the voter roll records as proof that a voter voted, warning that the counts of voters who voted can be higher than the number of ballots cast, the opposite issue of what New York Citizens Audit claims. 

The state Board of Elections explained why the election tally and voter roll number could be different. The voter roll captures voter history as recorded in a moment in time, while certified results capture all of the ballots cast during a voting period, including early voting and the tabulation of ballots cast by overseas or military voters, or voters who filed an affidavit ballot. 

The group received the voter file on Dec. 19, 2022, four days after the results were certified. The state board does not know when the group requested the file, because the request must have been made under a different name. 

The board extracts the statewide voter file, which contains millions of data points, each Monday, which is used to fill all the requests for that data that week. It is then sent on a disc to the requester in the mail. Based on when the data was received, the file could reflect the voter roll from three days before the results were certified, or even more than a week earlier, state election officials said. During the days before certification, counties are still uploading their election data into the statewide database, such as those from military or affidavit ballots. In the 2022 general election, there were more than 401,000 absentee ballots cast, and more than 65,000 affidavit ballots. 

The group has a voter roll from before all ballots were processed, and it is comparing that to certified results.  

Also, voters who cast ballots might move or die, which can affect whether their voting history records are contained in the voter roll at the time it was requested. There are also different data sources maintained by counties and the state, and there could be problems synchronizing them. 

The statewide database is a repository of information as provided by and edited by the county boards, said Kathleen R. McGrath, public information director at the state Board of Elections. “For that reason, it may be best to go county-by-county to get the complete voter participation for a particular election,” McGrath said.  

We asked Republican officials at the Erie County Board of Elections about New York Citizens Audit’s claims. Commissioner Ralph Mohr and Registration Supervisor Gabriel Chen met with the group to explain how elections are conducted, and both were familiar with the group’s claim. 

They confirmed that county boards of election submit records of each voter who cast a ballot to the state board within days of an election. But new data is uploaded as other votes are tabulated, such as overseas ballots and affidavit ballots. 

Erie County has nearly 618,000 active registered voters, and in the last five years, there have been four cases of people voting twice, and the cases usually involved a college student who was registered at their home address and at their student housing, Mohr said. 

“The number is minuscule,” he said. 

Our ruling

New York Citizens Audit claims that a count of 35,312 more ballots cast than voters who voted in the 2022 general election, when two different data sets are compared, is evidence the certification appears to be a federal crime. 

It is possible that the number of ballots certified in the election and the number of voters who are listed as participating in the 2022 election in a statewide voter file is different. The voter roll is a list of voters in the state at one point in time, and may not match up with the total number of ballots cast in an election. This does not prove the certification of the 2022 election results is a civil rights violation. 

The burden of proof in our rating system is on the speaker. New York Citizens Audit did not prove that differing data sets is evidence of a crime. We rate this claim False. 

A recent video revives the conspiracy theory that footage of President Joe Biden shows someone who isn’t President Joe Biden. 

Then Oct. 22 Instagram video  showed a split screen of the president’s Oct. 15 appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes”and an Oct. 18 interview with CBS News while aboard Air Force One. 

“You will soon learn about the #placeholders,” text above the video says. “Is this the same Joe Biden?”

The video heavily suggests that the answer is no, focusing on the way Biden’s chin appears in the CBS News clip. 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Biden’s chin is more pronounced in the clip of him speaking to reporters on Air Force One, but in reviewing both videos, it’s clear it’s the same person. 

We rate claims this post shows an impostor Pants on Fire!