How to Check If That ‘Deleted' Tweet Is Real

Gizmodo

4 days ago

It happens almost every day. A screenshot of a social media post from a prominent figure like Elon Musk or Donald Trump goes viral because it demonstrates just how stupid these men really are. But sometimes it sounds too good to be true. You go to check X or Truth Social yourself and it's not there. But maybe it was deleted. What do you do? Well, we've got some tips that might be helpful for uncovering the truth.
Right off the bat, it's important to note that there's not always a foolproof way to figure out if a 'deleted' tweet was real, especially if it's not from a famous person. But there are things you can do to get closer to the truth. And with a little bit of detective work, you can often figure out if that deleted tweet ever existed.
The first step in any tweet fact-check involves looking for the original post yourself on the platform where it appears to have originated, whether it was X, Facebook, or Truth Social. The easiest way to do that is to take a snippet of the text you found in a screenshot and search using quotation marks. You don't need to use the entire tweet; just a portion will be fine.
Let's take an example of an old tweet from Musk. Below is a tweet that I screenshotted on Nov. 23, 2023, but Musk later deleted. If you saw this screenshot floating around and wanted to verify if it was real, you could go to X and search the phrase 'What say you major brands?'
That search yields a few results that look like bots just repeating what Musk said:
And if you scroll down through those tweets, there's even a link to the original tweet from Musk. Clicking on that brings you to a notice that reads 'Hmm…this page doesn't exist. Try searching for something else.'
It seems we have confirmed that the tweet was real since we found the original URL, quoting the text we saw in a screenshot, and it's coming up with an error message. But what happens if you don't see any solid leads like that in the social media app where the post appeared to originate?
Check out a resource like news.google.com and search your snippet of text there. A quick search for 'What say you major brands?' doesn't come up with any hits, but that's not unexpected. The content of this Musk tweet doesn't appear to be particularly notable. The Tesla CEO often tweets hundreds of times each day, so it's unlikely that news outlets are going to write a story about everything. But that brings us to other clues about whether something should be in the news.
One good example recently was a post that appeared to be coming from Donald Trump that read 'STOP TALKING ABOUT EPSTEIN' with five exclamation points. If you went over to Truth Social and searched when that post was going viral, you wouldn't have found it. And since it was coming from the president, you would've expected there to have been lots of news articles quoting it.
The thing that complicated matters was the fact that it wasn't long before Trump posted something identical in spirit and somehow even more unhinged. But if you searched for that exact phrase in Google News, you still wouldn't see the fake tweet that read 'STOP TALKING ABOUT EPSTEIN.'
Maybe the tweet was deleted quickly, and there wasn't enough time for news outlets to pick it up. But there are other clues that might suggest something is fake. Does the tweet have a high number of views, but you don't see bots on X or major news outlets writing about it? A banal tweet isn't going to get picked up by CNN. But a tweet where a prominent figure declares something outrageous probably will. And if the screenshot you're looking at has millions of views, it should probably be showing up in reliable places.
There are many places online where people post fake tweets, including subreddits that revel in photoshops. If you're trying to investigate a fake tweet, a good place to start looking might be any message boards specifically started to be skeptical of that person. Elon Musk has plenty, for example.
There are also comedians who like to make fake tweets, with one in particular that we'll check in on whenever a tweet that looks too good to be true goes viral. That person is @marionumber4 on X and has the handle 679 Enthusiast. The person behind that account loves making fake tweets and frequently will photoshop 'this post has been deleted' on the bottom for maximum confusion.
Again, if you're going to spread a photoshopped tweet, people often don't know what to do if they see that visual signifier because it tells them in advance there's nothing to find if they go looking for it.
Which brings us to a recent fake tweet from '679 Enthusiast' that was fact-checked using Grok…
The account 679 Enthusiast recently made a photoshopped post about Musk that read 'Just like I took your wife,' that appeared to quote-tweet Stephen Miller. It's a joke about the rumors that there was some kind of romantic relationship between Musk and Miller's wife, rumors that have not been confirmed by any reliable sources. But naturally, someone wanted to ask Grok if the screenshot was real. Incredibly, Grok said it 'likely existed and was deleted.'
To be clear, the tweet never existed. But AI doesn't know that because AI doesn't actually know things. It's a fancy Speak & Spell. But Grok suggested it must be real because 'while a fabricated screenshot is possible, the evidence leans toward the post being real but removed, consistent with Musk's pattern of deleting controversial posts.'
Again, it's not real. But Musk saw this and replied, clearly frustrated, insisting, 'I never posted this.' Funny enough, 679 Enthusiast eventually deleted their photoshop of the Musk tweet about Miller's wife.
Check the Wayback Machine. There are places online that archive content, like the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, but there are so many caveats to that suggestion. The Wayback Machine is not quick to archive anything, so if you're looking for a recent tweet, it's probably not going to be there. But if it's an old tweet that you think was deleted, and you have the patience to find the dates in question through significant clicking around, you could luck out.
If you search for a tweet and see that it pops up, make sure you click through and verify it's coming from the official account. Tweets that looked like they were coming from Robert F. Kennedy were incredibly popular earlier this year but fooled a lot of people because they were actually from a parody account. Musk got rid of the old Twitter 'verification' model after he bought the social media platform in late 2022, and now anyone with $8 to spend can buy a blue checkmark.
One way that so-called 'parody' accounts trick people into believing they're real is to create long screen names that push the disclaimers out of view when you're reading the name on mobile. For example, one popular RFK Jr. account is called 'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. | Commentary only.' And if you even know that 'commentary' is supposed to be a disclaimer, you might not even see it. Only when you click through to the account's bio does it read 'No Affiliation,' though it still doesn't use precise language about where the 'affiliation' is lacking.
So, yes, you might find a tweet that seemed too stupid to be real in your search on platforms like X. But be extra careful when you look at the account that shared it.
There is no surefire way to always figure out whether a 'deleted' tweet is real. But hopefully our tips can help you narrow down your search. And given just how stupid our current timeline is, people are tweeting things that are simply beyond parody.