Elon Musk has quickly deleted a post which quoted “fake news” following the UK riots.
The owner of X, formerly Twitter, has fallen for fake news on his own platform as Musk shared the fake story.
The original poster, who is Ashlea Simon, the co-leader of far-right party Britain First, shared a fake news headline, which read “Keir Starmer considering building ‘emergency detainment camps’ on the Falkland Islands” which the poster then captioned with “We’re all being deported to the Falklands”.
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Musk fell for the tweet, reposting it with his own caption which read: “‘Detainment Camps’...”
Editor of Politic.co.uk, Josh Self, wrote: “Just Elon Musk quote tweeting the co-leader of far-right party, Britain First, who is sharing a fake Telegraph headline.
“Seen by almost 1 million people in 15 minutes. Utterly dystopian.”
The Tesla boss was quick to delete his post, which was reportedly seen at least 1.8 million times before it was taken down.
Sharing a screenshot of the page which said “This post has been deleted”, former strategist and spokesperson for Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, wrote: “Well thank heavens for that. This is what you get when you clock on @elonmusk reposting of fake news by Britain First an actual avowedly fascist bunch of thugs.
“Maybe just this once a grown up took his aside and said ffs Elon can you stop behaving like a three year old? Really looking forward to his interview with Trump. Two own goals together.
Taking to X to share their thoughts, one user wrote: “Pretty on brand for what Twitter has become and Musk’s very own goals though.”
A second said: “This is actually proof that community notes works. The post got community noted, Elon saw it was erroneous, then removed it. Good system. Best and most democratic real-time social media monitoring by far.”
And a third added: “So dangerous and no accountability.”
This isn’t the first time the billionaire has fallen for fake news, last month Musk shared a video which prposted to show “armed communist Maduro gangs ‘Colectivos’ are now storming polling stations in Punta Cardón” but later it was revealed that it actually showed thieves stealing air conditioners.
Elon Musk hasn’t commented yet on his latest slip up but he has been vocal on the policing of the UK riots.
Reposting a recent news tweet where the director of public prosecutions of England and Wales warned that sharing online material of riots could be an offence, Musk wrote: “This is actually happening”.