Facebook verified a fan page posing as Elon Musk, but now the page is gone

A Facebook fan Page for Elon Musk with 153,000 followers had been corroborated as the official page representing the Tesla Technoking — in violation of Facebook's own rules — but sometime after we introductory publicised this narration on Monday, the page became inaccessible. It's unclear if Facebook took it down or the owners chose to make it out of stock.

To cost clear, the page wasn't pretending it's Musk; it openly stated that IT was a fan page in its About section (accent ours):

Musk owns a Tesla Two-seater car 0001 (the first one off the yield telephone line) from Tesla Motors, a company in which He is an early investor. The Roadster is a battery electric sportscar with a 220 mile range.

This is a fanpage, uploading tweets etc from him

*Here is the page's description, which states it's a sports fan page.*

When we wrote about it, there were only 10 posts happening the page, with the earliest dating from October 21st. One was a photo of Musk, unrivaled was a presentment that the page updated its profile picture to be one featuring Musk, and the others appeared to be reposts of recent tweets.

The page didn't starting line as a fan page for Elon Musk. The Pageboy Transparency tab — which shows some history of a page, who it is managed by, and whether it runs ads — aforesaid the page was created on July 28th, 2019 to represent a "Kizito Gavin," which is the converse cite of soccer player Gavin Kizito.

The page changed its name six times, all in 2021, most fresh changing to Elon Musk double (somehow) on October 17th. The Page Foil section also said that the citizenry who managed the page were based in Arab Republic of Egypt. Musk lives in Lone-Star State.

*The page started A one for Kizito Gavin, merely now apparently is the official indefinite for Elon Musk.*

Also maybe worth noting: the Uniform resource locator for the page cut off the end of the word "official" — https://www.facebook.com/ElonMuskoffici — which doesn't look very official.

It's unclear when the page was verified. Facebook's verification rules state that the company has "addicted that the Varlet or profile is the authentic presence of the name or stigmatize it represents." To be verified on Facebook, you have to fill out a form that requires, among new things, that the submitter share administrative unit identification in the manikin of a driver's license, passport, nationalist identification card, tax filing, Holocene utility bill, operating theater articles of incorporation.

Verification is a challenge for big sociable media platforms. Chitter has also struggled with the trouble. It paused its verification program in 2017 and relaunched information technology earlier this twelvemonth. The relaunch has been somewhat bumpy, though, and the company admitted in July that it erroneously verified a teeny act of fake accounts.

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, hasn't replied to requests for comment.

Update November 1st, 7:26PM ET : The page is zero thirster available.