Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, used his Twitter account (formerly X) to share a plagiarized article written by a fake journalist.
On Saturday, Musk shared a screenshot of a Medium article on X – the social media site he also owns – by the well-known shitposter who goes by the name “Wall Street Silver.” The article’s headline reads, “45% of women expected to be single and childless by 2030,” and the subtext states that “current data” estimates that “45% of women between the ages of 25 and 44 will be single and childless by 2030” and that “the number of single women in the U.S. is expected to increase by 1.2% each year.” These figures are followed by images of women, including trans activist Dylan Mulvaney.
Musk, a leading figure in the pronatalism movement, added the caption: “This is extremely concerning!!”
There were some warning signs immediately – starting with the wording of the figures themselves. 45 percent of women generally and 45 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 44 are very different numbers; the fact that the article was published on a self-publishing site like Medium, where an editorial process is not guaranteed, raised further alarm bells.
So we decided to do a little digging. As it turns out, a few Google searches and some basic checking revealed that Musk had shared a completely unreliable, garbled piece of information that was published on Medium under the name of a fake author – and somehow that wasn’t even the worst part.
The article was published on Medium in January of this year, under the name of a purported author named “Mark Higley.” Dozens of articles have been published under this name for a Medium publication called The Savanna Post — but that’s it. He has no published work other than his Medium profile and is not on social media. A reverse image search for the portrait photo linked to his Medium profile yields a stock photo from Pexels.
When we looked at other alleged authors who were in the Savanna Postthere were similar signs of fakery: no broader author history, no social media presence, and many portrait photos that could be traced to stock photo or clip art websites. And when we saw headlines from the SavannahPosts Archive via Google, we found that almost all the articles on the site are plagiarized word for word from other websites and publishers. (There is at least one with author credit Savanna Post who appears to be genuine and lists himself as the “editor” of the site on LinkedIn. We’ve asked questions but haven’t received a response yet.)
This includes the post shared by Musk, which was originally published by a right-wing women’s lifestyle publication called Evie Magazine. Evie’s Articles range from innocuous lifestyle posts about fashion trends to a range of bizarre and often harmful content, including vaccine misinformation, a variety of completely unscientific claims about women’s health, anti-trans fearmongering, unsubstantiated “psycho-victim” conspiracy theories, and pro-life messages that often include false claims about safe and effective abortifacients. (There’s also an associated period-tracking and fitness app, whose lead investor is Palantir co-founder and libertarian tech billionaire Peter Thiel.)
In other words: Evie is neither a reliable source of news and information, nor simply a conservative media outlet. It is a deeply conspiracy-theoretical website that ignores scientific facts and critical thinking. This applies to the post shared by Musk, which is full of factual errors and misrepresented data.
First, there is the claim that the “45 percent” estimate comes from a “recent” forecast. In fact, the estimate the article focuses on comes from a Morgan Stanley report published in September 2019—meaning the supposedly current numbers are nearly five years old.
The article is certainly not a thoughtful or data-based analysis of these years-old estimates either. The author uses the prediction to rail against the rise of women in the labor market, writing that “unfortunately, many women have embraced the modern feminist lifestyle, choosing to sleep with anyone, abort their baby if they unexpectedly become pregnant, and renounce marriage.” She then adds that these “cultural trends will have a tremendous impact on the future of American society,” and to support this thesis, she writes that “surveys show that unmarried and childless women are more likely to struggle with mental illness and lack of self-confidence,” adding that “promiscuous sex” has a “negative impact” on the mental health of young women. To support these last two claims about women’s mental health, she references two sources each: a descriptive study conducted by two Algerian scientists and published in the journal The Eurasia Proceedings of Educational and Social Sciences in 2017, in addition to another Evie Article.
However, none of these sources really support the author’s argument. The Algerian study, which examined a cohort of 200 women in western Algeria, did find that unmarried women were more likely to suffer from depression and stress, as well as lower self-confidence. However, the researchers concluded that their suffering was due to the pressure to marry and the stigma that unmarried Arab women often face – not because living as an unmarried woman in a vacuum somehow destroys women’s brains. Evie ignores this context entirely, simply linking to a Cambridge Press page from a later reprint that does not even contain the full text of the study—and instead uses the survey to propagate the very stigma the research addresses.
Meanwhile, this second Evie The article, titled “Promiscuous Women and Weak Men Are a Complementary Problem,” is purely opinion-based and offers no data or research to support the claim that promiscuity is damaging to women’s mental health. It doesn’t even contain the words “mental” or “health,” either individually or together.
In other words, from top to bottom, it’s a hand-picked mess of false claims and misrepresented research. But you wouldn’t know that from the misleading, context-free headline Musk reposted—which, again, wasn’t even a screenshot of the original article, but an image of a plagiarized version posted under the name and stock photo-provided headshot of entirely the wrong person.
In recent months, Musk has stepped up his attacks on what he frequently refers to as “traditional” or “mainstream media” — that is, essentially well-known news organizations that generally have editorial standards and enforceable systems of accountability and ethics. He has repeatedly called the vague bogeyman of mainstream media a propaganda machine, while encouraging internet users to follow his example and get their “news” primarily from X. (Musk has also endorsed former President Donald Trump for president, another person who has used his platform to sow public distrust of media institutions.)
“I don’t read much traditional media propaganda anymore,” the billionaire wrote in a September 2023 X-post, calling it a “waste of time.”
“Just get my news from X – much more direct, with real world-class subject matter experts and tons of humor,” he added. “Sooo much better!”
Instead, the richest person in the world – not to mention one of the most powerful unelected figures – appears to continue using the website to actually Propaganda.
At the time of publication, Musk’s tweet had been viewed over 70 million times.
More about Elon Musk’s media skills: Gullible Elon Musk falls for fake news again and deletes his post
