Nolte: Snopes Forced to Reverse Fact Check Blaming Elon Musk’s Starlink for Sub Tragedy

Snopes, another in a long line of fake fact-checking sites, attempted to suggest that Elon Musk and his Starlink internet system lost contact with the missing Titanic submersible.

Here was the Snopes headline: “Was the Missing Titanic Submersible Relying on Satellites from Elon Musk’s SpaceX to Communicate?”

And to that blatantly stupid question, Snopes declaratively said… TRUE [emphasis original]:

When news broke of the failed communications, a number of news reports and posts claimed that the missing submersible was relying on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites for its communications.

The claim is true. OceanGate, the company that operates the submersible, tweeted right before the expedition that it was relying on Starlink: “Without any cell towers in the middle of the ocean, we are relying on @Starlink to provide the communications we require throughout this year’s 2023 Titanic Expedition.”

Good grief.

At this very moment, I am hooked up to Starlink. Were it not for Starlink, you wouldn’t be reading this because I’m ten miles down a dirt road in Northern Wisconsin where my phone is useless. Starlink is wonderful. Starlink is pumping us with so much internet my wife can stream her TV shows while I write this.

But.

If there were a tree or a branch or a leaf or a water tower or whatever in the way, it would disrupt the service. At our previous campsite, due to trees, we got so little service we gave up.  Starlink’s portable satellite receiver must have a clear sky to catch the signal from Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellites.

So.

On what planet would anyone with half a brain and access to Google believe Starlink or SpaceX or any satellite would have anything to do with communicating with a submarine that could be more than two miles under dark water?

What’s more, as Hot Air points out, no one knows if the lack of communication is actually because of a failure in the communications system. There are all kinds of other reasons the sub might have lost contact, none of them having to do with comms.

Snopes wanted us to believe what, exactly, that submersibles communicate via wireless internet?

After getting laughed at over their blatant lie, Snopes changed the verdict to “unproven,” even though it is undeniably proven that the Starlink system could not communicate with a sub ten feet under the water, much less thousands of feet.

Eventually, Snopes was forced to tell the truth with a “false” claim.

Snopes was justifiably hit with a reader’s note on Twitter:

Then Musk said of Snopes, “You can’t even run a good psy op[.]”

Can you imagine the electric excitement that ran through the dead souls of those in charge at Snopes as they tried to blame Elon Musk, the villain who allows conservatives to say stuff, for a terrible tragedy the whole world is watching?

I guess that charge of electric excitement felt too good to use Google or read the Starlink website.

I love it.

I love it so much.

I do; I love this stuff.

Watching these left-wing liars and propagandists, these fake fact-checkers, constantly and repeatedly disgrace themselves is nothing less than glorious. Every time they are caught trying to get away with something brazenly partisan and dishonest, whatever residual credibility and impact they might have dissipates a little more. Snopes is already a joke. This particular lie is the kind of fabrication that sticks. Basing a partisan fact check on that level of desperate absurdity will be remembered. I know I’ll be throwing it in their stupid, lying faces until the sun burns out.