Left-wing fact-checker Snopes.com altered its rating about a claim suggesting that billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink company was partially responsible for the disappearance of the OceanGate submersible since Tuesday.
Initially, Snopes claimed the allegation of Musk’s company bearing some responsibility was "true," then updated the fact check to say it was "unproven," before finally adding necessary context and deeming the allegation "false."
The fact-checking debacle acquired the attention of Musk himself, who ripped the website on Twitter once it admitted it was wrong.
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Snopes ran its initial assessment of the claim that Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet system under his aerospace company SpaceX, was in charge of communications between the OceanGate submersible and its surface crew on Tuesday.
The claim on the site read, "OceanGate, the company behind the submersible that went missing in June 2023 on a Titanic wreckage exploration, relied on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites to provide communications during the expedition."
The claim seemed to suggest that the loss of the vessel was some error on Starlink’s part, and Snopes initially reported the claim as "True," though the website admitted it didn’t know all the details.
It provided context, saying, "Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which Elon Musk runs. However, we do not know how much Starlink is responsible for the loss of contact with the submersible, nor the reasons behind that loss of contact."
However, once Snopes started getting more facts in the story, it updated its rating on the claim to "unknown." The new assessment provided a less fuzzy account of Starlink’s involvement with the OceanGate crew.
It read, "Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which Elon Musk runs, and OceanGate indeed said it was relying on the company for the exhibition, which included the submersible and a mothership – that is, a vessel that stays above water to navigate and communicate with land during the exhibition."
The fact checker acknowledged, "It’s unknown if, or to what extent, Starlink was used by the submersible itself at any point, or whether it was only used by the mothership. That said, we do not know how much Starlink is responsible for the loss of contact with the submersible, nor the reasons behind that loss of contact."
That wasn’t the final word from Snopes. It updated its fact check a third time, admitting the initial claim was "false." The updated context provided read, "However, 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. How, or under what circumstances, the mothership used Starlink technology during the expedition remained unknown."
This last post, which is the one currently on Snopes.com, provided an editor’s note, acknowledging the errors of first two versions. It claimed, "Since the original publication of this fact check on June 20, 2023, Snopes clarified its rating and text to make clear that — while OceanGate, the company overseeing the submersible's expedition, said it was using Starlink satellites for the trip — the submersible itself was not using the technology to communicate. How, or to what extent, the vessel's mothership was using Starlink to communicate remained unknown."
Musk blasted the site on multiple times on Twitter during its evolving fact-check. Replying to a Snopes tweet linking to the story, the billionaire Twitter owner claimed, "You can’t even run a good psy op."
Replying to a tweet showing images of the different ratings Snopes tagged to the claim, Musk declared, "Snopes is a con."
Fox News Digital reached out to Snopes.com for comment and is waiting for a response.
