The article was bylined by a fake writer — and plagiarized word-for-word from an alt-right conspiracy website. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, used his X-formerly-Twitter account to boost a plagiarized article bylined by a fake journalist. On Saturday, Musk reshared a screenshot of a Medium article on X — the social media website he also owns — by the noted shitposter who goes by the handle “Wall Street Silver.” The article’s headline reads “45% of Women Estimated to be Single and Childless by 2030,” with subtext declaring that “recent data” estimates “that 45% of women between ages 25 and 44 will be single and childless by the time 2030 rolls around,” and that “the number of single women in the U.S. is expected to rise 1.2% every year.” These figures are followed by images of women including the trans activist Dylan Mulvaney. Musk, a leading figure in the pronatalist movement, added the caption: “This is extremely concerning!!” Immediately, there were some red flags — starting with the framing of the numbers themselves. Forty-five percent of women in general and 45 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 44 are very different figures; that the article was posted on a self-publishing site like Medium, where there’s no guarantee of an editorial process, rang further alarm bells. So we decided to do some digging. As it turns out, a few Google searches and some basic scrutiny revealed that Musk shared a wildly unreliable, mangled piece of information published to Medium under the byline of a fake writer — and somehow, that wasn’t even the worst thing about it.
via futurism: Elon Musk Tweets Plagiarized Article Bylined by Fake Writer