Claim: A viral screenshot claims Elon Musk in a tweet said he would buy Coca-Cola next and include cocaine as an ingredient.
Our findings and analysis show the viral screenshot of the tweet is genuine.
Full Text
Entrepreneur and investor, Elon Musk, who is popularly known for his various businesses like SpaceX, Tesla etc., recently closed the deal to acquire the bird application, Twitter for $44 billion.
Following this acquisition announcement, he has been making several comments on what he intends to do with the deal. Recently, what appears to be the screenshot of his tweet was shared with us for verification in view of its virality. This screenshot claims he said he would buy Coca-Cola next and add cocaine to its ingredients.
“Next i’m buying Coca-Cola to put cocaine back in,” the tweet read.
Coca-Cola, which was invented in 1885 by John Pemberton, a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia, used to contain cocaine in the form of an extract of the coca leaf. This inspired the “Coca” part of the beverage’s name while the “Cola” comes from the kola nut (which contains caffeine, another stimulant).
This was subsequently eliminated because the desired flavour could be extracted from the coca leaves, removing the cocaine and leaving the drug aside as a byproduct.
Verification
A quick look at Elon Musk’s Twitter account which was created in 2009 and has over 87 million followers, showed he actually tweeted the statement in the screenshot.
In fact, the tweet was shared in the early hours of Thursday, April 28, 2022 and had already generated over 2.7 million likes, 119 quote tweets and 439 retweets.
Additionally, a keyword search on Google also referenced the tweet to Elon’s Twitter handle confirming the originality of the tweet.
Notably, Elon’s tweet was also headlined by Fox Business, Bloomberg, Business Today, etc. as a viable news story etc.
Additionally, DUBAWA also analysed the screenshot of the tweet on Forensically, comparing it to a fake tweet that was forged by DUBAWA using Tweetgen. The results confirmed Elon’s tweet to be genuine.
A typical fake tweet created using a tool is usually framed by a three colored pattern. As magnified in the image above, the fake tweet forged by DUBAWA bears such a frame.
In original tweets actually tweeted on Twitter, the screenshots do not carry such frames as seen in the results of Elon’s tweet below.
Conclusion
Our findings show that the claim in the viral screenshot is real as we found the original tweet on Elon Musk’ Twitter page. Our analysis also shows the viral screenshot of the tweet was not manipulated.
