Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 22/03/2023
The founder of Tesla, SpaceX and since recently, the majority owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, is often the actor of various disinformation. The latest one is related to the war in Ukraine.
We recorded a post on Facebook in which the following statement was attributed to Musk:
“Bakhmut is practically surrounded. And that’s good.”
In the post of the Café.ba web portal, it is also stated that the American businessman is “closely following the situation on the Artyomovsk front” and that he is “sharing real data on the advancement of Russian fighters to the citizens of the USA”.
Musk did respond to a Bahmut-related tweet posted by an account titled “War Mapper,” stating that the city was “Almost surrounded.”
However, Musk did not write “it’s good” after that.
That Musk’s comment referred to a tweet posted by the account titled Eight Sleep, which is unrelated to the war in Ukraine.
Eight Sleep is a company that produces pod mattresses whose temperature can be regulated. The company’s Twitter account posted a marketing video promoting a pod mattress whose temperature can be adjusted. Musk liked the product or the post and left the comment, “it’s good”.
Although Musk expressed support for Ukraine at the beginning of the Russian aggression, his recent statements have been criticized. One of Musk’s statements was about the “peace plan”, which included Ukraine’s declaration of neutrality and the ceding of Crimea to Russia. In addition, Elon Musk said in October of last year that his company could not supply Starlink satellite Internet to Ukraine for free for an indefinite period. Later he changed his decision and announced that he would still continue to supply and finance the provision of Internet services.
Against the background of changing support and conflicting statements by Musk regarding the war in Ukraine, information spread on social networks that he was suspending Twitter accounts that collect aid for victims in Ukraine. The Raskrinkavanje.me team proved that claim to be false.
As regards the post that is the subject of this analysis, Elon Musk’s two responses were combined by editing the screenshots in such a way as to give the impression that the founder of Tesla actually said that the occupation of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was good. However, we proved that those two answers refer to two completely different posts.
For this reason, we assess this media content as disinformation.
A media report that contains a “mix” of facts and inaccurate or half-true content is rated “Disinformation”. In such cases, the media may not necessarily be aware of incorrect information being published alongside the truth. Also, reports with false attributions or titles that do not reflect the text’s information accuracy will be treated with this rating.