Elon Musk, owner of the social platform X, permanently banned author Stephen King from the platform after the writer “trolled” him.

A fictional rumor that Elon Musk permanently banned Stephen King from X, the social media platform Musk owns, circulated widely online in the summer of 2024.

For example, Facebook page SpaceX Fanclub posted a meme in July 2024 with the caption: “Elon Musk Bans Stephen King Permanently From Platform X After He Trolled the Tech Mogul.”

Oh boy, folks! If you thought the Twitterverse couldn’t get any wilder, buckle up! Elon Musk, the tech mogul, is a guy who loves a little bit of drama and has permanently banned none other than Stephen King from Platform X (because, you know, that’s a thing now). Why, you ask? Well, it seems the Master of Horror had the audacity to troll Musk, and we all know what happened next. […]

King, known for his sharp wit and even sharper tongue, took to Platform X to mock Musk’s latest ventures. Whether it was about SpaceX, Tesla, or one of Musk’s many other projects, King didn’t hold back. The thing reached its boiling point when Musk just said enough, knowing he never walks away from controversies.

Some readers seemed to interpret the rumor as a factual recounting of real-life events. However, there was no evidence of Musk banning King on the platform, whether temporarily or permanently. As of this writing, King has an active X account.

Rather, the rumor about the purported ban originated with Esspots.com — a website that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature and is a subsidiary of SpaceXMania.com. A “Rated Satire” badge was displayed in the upper-left corner of the Facebook meme. Esspots.com’s “Disclaimer” page states:

Welcome to Esspots.com, a website that specializes in satire, parody, and humor. Before you proceed to read our content, we would like to emphasize that nothing on this website is real. All of the articles, stories, and commentary found on Esspots.com are entirely fictitious and created for the purpose of entertainment only.

We understand that satire can sometimes be mistaken for actual news or events, but we want to make it clear that we do not publish factual or accurate information. We do not intend to deceive or mislead our readers in any way, and all of our content should be taken with a grain of salt.

The fictional story spread as Musk criticized a July 29 X post by King about former President Donald Trump. In that X post, King claimed, “Republicans torpedoed the bipartisan border bill at Trump’s request,” in reference to legislation that aimed to reduce the number of migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border and raise the standards for qualifying for asylum. Musk wrote in response, “Did you read even a summary of that bill? It was a wolf in sheep’s clothing that would have made things worse!”

Esspots.com has a history of making up stories for shares and comments, and SpaceXMania.com uses artificial-intelligence software to create such content.

Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims from these sources about Musk in the past, including the assertion that he invested $1 billion dollars into a fictional production studio operated by Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson. We also debunked a false rumor from a different source of “satire” that claimed Musk was threatening punishment against X users who call Trump supporters “weird.”

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.