Snopes Tries to Pin Titanic Sub Disaster on Elon Musk, But a Basic Science Fact Makes Their Ruling Impossible

Left-wing “fact-checking” site Snopes tried to place some of the blame for the loss of the ill-fated Titan submersible on Elon Musk, but a little thing called “facts” got in the way of its partisan hackery. The site initially tried to tar Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet services with vague links to the company that launched the submersible that went missing Sunday in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland. Authorities announced Thursday that they had found debris from the submersible and that the occupants are believed deceased. In its June 20 “fact-check” piece, entitled “Was the Missing Titanic Submersible Using Satellites from Elon Musk’s Company?” Snopes claimed that the submersible that went missing “relied” on Starlink for communications. “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” segment read. The “rating” Snopes gave to the so-called fact-check was “True.” You can see that original post on the internet site Wayback Machine, which archives past website postings. But hours later, the site made an about-face and gave the claim an “unproven” rating after Twitter’s community notes took Snopes to school with actual scientific facts. Then, after more alterations to its post, the “fact-check” suddenly switched to a “false” rating. [firefly_poll] Now, the Snopes page reads as a “false” rating and features four updates telling readers that the story was “amended” to “add details.” The “false” rating suddenly showed up after Snopes got a community note on its own tweet about its false “fact-check.”

Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which Elon Musk runs. https://t.co/0MORTIgqfJ

— snopes.com (@snopes) June 21, 2023

The community note read that “Starlink operates in the 10.7 to 12.7 GHz band.” Then notes that it is scientifically and technically impossible for anyone to use Starlink underwater. “Penetration depth of 2.45GHz in water is <8cm and falls off with increasing frequency,” the note reads. “Therefore, Starlink cannot be used to communicate with an underwater submarine,” the note added. The “fact-checking” site has had many problems before. Just a few years ago, it was forced to retract 54 stories when its co-founder was accused of plagiarism, Daily Wire noted in 2021. Snopes was attempting to smear Starlink and Elon Musk with the Titanic submersible disaster by linking Musk’s Internet technology to failures of communication without bothering to ascertain if Musk’s Starlink was even used by OceanGate for communications at all. Like they have so many times before, Snopes was caught red-handed — or maybe “blue-handed” is a better term, considering their political leaning — trying to smear an opponent with yet another false “fact-check.” This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.