By Hazel Gandhi
A viral video on Instagram claiming that Elon Musk intends to buy Facebook and Instagram after his Twitter takeover is false. BOOM found that the video has been digitally altered and Musk did not express any such intention.
The viral clip shows Musk saying, "I predict that I will buy tomorrow the entire Meta company. Facebook and Instagram will be mine too."
The video was shared by the handle @elonmusksocial and has 2.9 million views and more than 69,000 likes as of writing this article.
Click here to view.
The post is also circulating on Facebook. See here.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the video has been edited and Musk has not expressed any intention of buying Meta, and thereby, Facebook and Instagram.
We ran a keyword search on Facebook and found a video uploaded by a verified user, Dan Bongino, for his podcast, 'The Dan Bongino Show'. The video of Musk in this clip was visually similar to our viral video. The video was uploaded on 15 April, 2022, with the heading, "Elon Musk is asked why he really wants to buy Twitter — Just listen..."
We found the logo of TED, an American nonprofit that spreads ideas through talks and speeches, at the bottom of this video. Here is a comparison between the viral clip and the clip we found on Facebook.
Taking a cue from this, we searched the original clip on Google, and found a YouTube video uploaded from the verified TED handle on 14 April, 2022. In the clip titled 'Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works — live at TED2022,' Musk is speaking to the head of TED, Chris Anderson about his intention to buy Twitter.
In this almost hour-long video, Musk talks about his plans and motivations to buy Twitter, his early days of Tesla, the difficulties in their manufacturing process and how they overcame it, and the future of AI and robotics.
We watched the full interview and did not find Elon Musk making any mention of acquiring Meta. Moreover, we could also not find any news reports that mentioned Elon Musk making plans to buy Meta.
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