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| - A rumor that Elon Musk said Pride flags shouldn't be allowed in school classrooms circulated online in September 2024. For example, the Facebook page SpaceX Fanclub (archived) posted a meme sharing a quote in which Musk allegedly said, " Pride flags should be banned from classrooms, permanently!":
(Facebook user "SpaceX Fanclub")
A pinned comment under the Facebook post shared a link to an article on esspots.com, which stated:
In a move that sent shockwaves through social media and the education sector alike, Elon Musk has ignited a fresh firestorm of controversy, declaring that Pride flags should be permanently banned from classrooms. In a tweet that rapidly went viral, the SpaceX CEO, Tesla founder, and Twitter's own self-proclaimed "Chief Twit" wrote, "Pride flags should be banned from classrooms, permanently! Time to focus on education, not agendas."
[...]
In response to the backlash from some schools, Musk followed up with another tweet: "Don't get me wrong, kids can still have rainbows in their drawings… just not plastered on the walls in the name of an agenda."
Some readers seemed to interpret the rumor as a factual recounting of real-life events, with one commenter stating, "I truly agree. Let's get back to teaching what it means to be a great American!"
However, there was no evidence of Musk calling for such a ban. Rather, the rumor about the supposed Pride flag ban originated with SpaceX Fanclub and esspots.com — a Facebook page and affiliated website that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature. The Facebook page's "Introduction" section states: "We post SATIRE, nothing on this page is real."
Esspots.com's disclaimer read:
Welcome to Esspots.com, a website that specializes in satire, parody, and humor. Before you proceed to read our content, we would like to emphasize that nothing on this website is real. All of the articles, stories, and commentary found on Esspots.com are entirely fictitious and created for the purpose of entertainment only.
Esspots.com has a history of making up stories for shares and comments.
Musk has a history of sharing transphobic content on his social media platform. The fictional story spread amid news of Brazil banning access to X in the country after a court ordered Musk to take down content on the platform that government officials said threatened the integrity of its elections. Musk refused to comply, triggering the ban.
Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims about Musk in the past, including a rumor that spread through a satirical article that he called for the banning of electronic voting machines. That rumor turned out to be true.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.
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