Snopes Changes Rating From ‘True’ to ‘False’ on Rumor Musk Was Somehow to Blame for Missing Titanic Sub
Fact-checking website Snopes changed a rating from “True” to “Unproven” to “False” over the course of a day, in an article about Elon Musk and the Starlink satellite system being a factor in the disappearance of a submersible with five passengers that was set to explore the wreck of the Titanic.
After communication with a submersible carrying five people was cut off (a story that continues to develop), the missing deep sea vessel was major news but quickly became a football in various ways on political Twitter. Donald Trump Jr. was in the vanguard of floating conspiracy theories about the missing vehicle, but in the blame game many on the other side of the aisle were quick to point a finger at Musk.
Among those doing so were @OccupyDemocrats, activist and pillow CEO William Legate, and prominently, the website and Twitter account @PopCrave, in a now-deleted tweet.
Snopes, too, jumped on the connection, rating it as true that the missing sub relied on Musk’s Starlink for communication, allowing in the original version of the article that it wasn’t clear “how much” Musk’s company was “responsible” for the loss of communication.
The company running the Titanic expeditions, OceansGate, tweeted in the past about their use of Starlink to stay connected to the internet while at sea. That is what the system is, it provides the ability to connect online from remote locations, as was done by Ukrainian forces as Russia cut off infrastructure during it’s invasion and attack.
Citing tweets that showed OceansGate used Starlink in this capacity, Snopes wrote that it was “true” the submersible communicated via Starlink but that it was unclear how much it, and by extension Musk, were to blame for the vehicle being lost.
As Twitter replies began to pile up pointing out that the sub couldn’t possibly rely on satellites to communicate from under the ocean, the rating at Snopes changed from True to Unproven, saying it was “unknown if, or to what extent, Starlink was used by the submersible itself at any point” and “we do not know how much Starlink is responsible for the loss of contact with the submersible.”
Ultimately, the rating was changed to “False” on the grounds that “scientists have pointed out that the submersible would have had an acoustic link with the surface vessel and could not have relied on satellite internet to communicate with the surface.”
The evolution was so predictable that it was literally predicted on Twitter.
Musk eventually took notice, replying to Noam Blum’s thread.
😂😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023
That said, we do not know how much Community Notes is responsible for the loss of the “True” rating on the claim, nor the additional fact checks of their fact check behind that loss of rating.
