Fact Check: Viral image of Elon Musk reading The Flat-Earth Conspiracy is altered

Hyderabad: An image of Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, reading a book titled The Flat-Earth Conspiracy is being widely shared on platform X.

The X user shared the image along with the caption, “He knows,” hinting that Musk believes in the flat earth theory.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the viral image was doctored.

The viral image featured a book called The Flat-Earth Conspiracy with Eric Dubay as its author’s name on the cover. We performed a keyword search and found that Eric Dubay did author a book with the same title but the original cover of the book is not the same as the one in the viral image.

The original cover of the book shows a ship at the edge of a sea that ends in a gigantic waterfall as one would expect if the Earth is flat. The book cover in the viral image is different. The book’s name is on the full globe of the Earth as seen from space.

A comparison of both book covers can be seen below.

In order to find the original image, we performed a reverse image search and found the real image posted on Facebook. In this one, Musk could be seen reading a book titled Dinosaur Hunter by Homer Hickam. The image was posted on the official Facebook page of Homer Hickam in 2010.

Homer’s caption reads, “Elon Musk gets caught reading The Dinosaur Hunter. If you’re not sure who he is, you can easily look him up. He’s an influential fellow, that much is certain. Thanks, Elon!”

Through a keyword search, we also found the same image of Elon Musk reading Dinosaur Hunter in an article titled ‘5 books that Elon Musk recommends everyone read’ on Miami Diario dated October 20, 2021.

Through our search, we also found a few other altered versions of the viral image as well.