Satirical Article About Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Viral as Real
The satirical article claimed that Parag Agrawal was arrested for possession of child pornography.
Fact-Check: The article claiming former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was arrested is false.
(Photo: The Quint)
The screenshot of a news article about former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is going viral on the internet.
The claim: "Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of Twitter, has been arrested for possession of child pornography after a tip off from Elon Musk," said the article published in one Vancouver Times, published on 23 December.
An archive of the post can be found here.
How did we find that out:
We conducted a keyword search to look for news stories about Agrawal's arrest but could not find any report from a trusted news publication.
We then looked at the website that published the news article Vancouver Times.
The article had a note at the end of the page that said, "This is a satire article", and was in the "SATIRE" section of the page.
A note in the article.
We also found a disclaimer on the website: "All information in the Service is provided 'as is,' with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information."
We also looked at the FBI database in San Francisco and found no mention of Agrawal's arrest.
Vancouver Times, a source of misinformation: Articles and stories published on the website that has previously been shared as real and has been debunked by The Quint's WebQoof team and other fact-checkers.
Conclusion: A satirical article claiming that former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was arrested by the FBI has gone viral as real.
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