Fabricated X Post Claims German Government Faked COVID-19, No, Chick-fil-A Isn’t Switching to Fake Chicken or Horse Meat, and More
In this excerpt of NewsGuard's confidential weekly briefing for clients, we update you on the top misinformation and disinformation trends and narratives to help your organization stay ahead of emerging threats.
Subscribe to NewsGuard's Substack newsletter, "Reality Check," a weekly report on how misinformation online is undermining trust—and who’s behind it.
Edited by Jack Brewster and Eric Effron.
Fabricated X Post Claims German Government Faked COVID-19
By Marie Richter and Leonie Pfaller
Social media users and misinformation sites are circulating the false claim that German chancellor Olaf Scholz admitted in an X post that the COVID-19 pandemic was fake and instead was a psy-op (psychological operation) to test lockdowns. This false narrative has garnered over 850,000 views across multiple platforms worldwide.
The claim appears to have originated in an April 2, 2024, article by the U.S. conspiracy site The People’s Voice (NewsGuard Trust Score: 0/100), which published a fabricated X post supposedly made by Scholz that read: “Covid was a psy-op to test compliance with mRNA and lockdowns. There was no pandemic.”
TikTok Users Fooled by AI-Generated Images of ‘Satanic Build-A-Bear’
A collection of AI-generated images, originally shared by a popular Facebook satire page, are being misrepresented by some TikTok users as evidence that popular stuffed animal chain Build-A-Bear has undergone a “satanic” rebrand and is offering a new line of “Baphomet Bears.”
Baphomet is a pagan deity that the Knights Templar were accused of worshiping. It later became an occult symbol used by groups including the Church of Satan, according to Encyclopedia Britannica (Trust Score: 87.5/100).
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No, Chick-fil-A Isn’t Switching to Fake Chicken or Horse Meat
Chick-fil-A’s recent policy change on antibiotics sparked false claims on social media about what the fast-food chain would soon be serving — everything from “fake chicken,” to “lab-grown chicken,” to “horse meat”— gaining 2.4 million views.
The claims appear to stem from Chick-fil-A’s March 2024 announcement that it is modifying its policy on antibiotics by switching from the No Antibiotics Ever (NAE) pledge to serve 100 percent antibiotic-free chicken to the No Antibiotics Important to Human Medicine (NAIHM) standard. Some social media users claimed the change, from allowing no antibiotics to permitting some antibiotics, as a move to “fake” chicken, Lead Stories (Trust Score: 100/100) first reported. Others appear to define fake chicken as lab-grown from chicken cells or even horse meat, NewsGuard found.
Arizona’s ‘Federal Only’ Voter List Sparks False Claims About Illegal Voting
Misrepresenting a passage on the Arizona elections website, social media users are falsely claiming that immigrants in the state will be able to vote in federal elections, including the presidential election in November.
“They are openly allowing illegal immigrants to vote in federal elections now in Arizona,” stated X user @Iheartmindy, who has previously shared political and health misinformation, in an April 16, 2024, post that garnered over 650,000 views within a day.
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