musk: How Facebook got ‘fooled’ by a fake profile of Elon Musk – Times of India

Elon Musk is not on Facebook. In fact, it’s quite evident by his tweets that he doesn’t like Facebook. Yet, somehow Facebook still managed to verify a scam page thinking that it belongs to the Tesla CEO. According to a report by The Verge, a fan page belonging to Elon Musk was mistakenly assumed by Facebook that it belonged to the Tesla CEO. What’s worse, as per the report, that the page was managed by a Bitcoin scammer.
How Facebook managed to verify it or not see that it didn’t belong to Musk is rather unbelievable. For starters, the page makes it very veer in the About section that it doesn’t belong to Musk. In the About section, the page clearly states, “This is a fanpage, uploading tweets etc from him.” Further, in the Page Transparency section, it says that the page is managed by people who are “based in Egypt”, where Musk doesn’t live.
The fan page, in fact, wasn’t even created for Musk, as per the report by The Verge. It started in July 2019, under the name, Kizito Gavin. Since then the page changed its name six times, twice to Elon Musk and that too on October 17. Yet, the page was officially verified as Elon Musk’s.
Musk has made it publicly known that he is not on Facebook. In 2018, he officially deleted his account “It’s not a political statement and I didn’t do this because someone dared me to do it. Just don’t like Facebook. Gives me the willies. Sorry.” Musk has also deleted Facebook pages of Tesla and SpaceX — his two high-profile companies — as well. Last year, he also tweeted, “Facebook sucks”.
The fan page, meanwhile, isn’t visible anymore. Whether it has been deleted by the owners or taken down by Facebook is not clear. Getting verified on Facebook isn’t an easy process but only happens when the company has “confirmed that the Page or profile is the authentic presence of the public figure or brand it represents.” Furthermore, a form has to be filled and an official ID has to be submitted. The ID could be articles of incorporation, driver’s license, passport among others.