Fact-check: Posts about Pakistan from Elon Musk parody account taken seriously online

Elon Musk, an American billionaire and businessman who also owns the popular social media platform X (Twitter), has shared a series of posts criticising the state of democracy and freedom of speech in Pakistan, at a time when X continues to remain blocked in the country.

The claim is false. The posts attributed to Musk have, in reality, been shared by a parody account.

Claim

Pakistani social media users are sharing screenshots of a string of posts dated April 23 in WhatsApp groups, which they believe have been written by Elon Musk on his platform X.

“Pakistan deserves freedom of speech! Every corner of the world deserves it,” reads a post on X. Another states that X was adhering to the law, “but it looks like the law itself is violating the law in Pakistan”.

While in one post Elon Musk allegedly writes: “Democracy under attack in Pakistan”.

Fact

The X account, whose posts are being shared, is in reality a parody account of Elon Musk. It is titled @ElonMuskVines and its description very clearly states, “commentary and parody account of the owner, executive chairman, and CTO of X Elon Musk”.

While the original X (Twitter) account of the American businessman has the handle, @elonmusk, with over 181.3 million followers to date.

To further confirm if any such posts were made by Musk, Geo Fact Check scrolled through his X timeline on the dates April 23 and 24. It could not find the alleged posts being shared in WhatsApp groups.

Geo Fact Check then conducted an internet archive search for any deleted post by the account. It could not find any such posts which were deleted by Musk’s original account.

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