A Facebook fan page for Tesla CEO Elon Musk with 153,000 followers had been verified as the official page representing the Tesla Technoking — in violation of Facebook’s own rules — but now the page has become inaccessible.
According to The Verge, it is unclear if Facebook took it down or if the owners chose to make it unavailable.
The report said that the page wasn’t pretending to be Musk; it openly stated that it was a fan page in its About section.
Musk owns a Tesla Roadster car 0001 (the first one off the production line) from Tesla Motors, a company in which he is an early investor. The Roadster is a battery-electric sports car with a 220-mile range.
This is a fan page, uploading tweets, etc from him, the page mentioned.
The page didn’t start as a fan page for Elon Musk.
The Page Transparency tab — which shows some history of a page, who it is managed by, and whether it runs ads — said the page was created on July 28, 2019, to represent a “Kizito Gavin,” which is the reversed name of soccer player Gavin Kizito.
The page changed its name six times, all in 2021, most recently changing to Elon Musk twice (somehow) on October 17. The Page Transparency section also said that the people who managed the page were based in Egypt. Musk lives in Texas.
Also, maybe worth noting: the URL for the page cut off the end of the word “official,” which doesn’t seem very official.
It’s unclear when the page was verified. Facebook’s verification rules state that the company has “confirmed that the Page or profile is the authentic presence of the public figure or brand it represents”.
To be verified on Facebook, users have to fill out a form that requires, among other things, that the submitter share official identification in the form of a driver’s license, passport, national identification card, tax filing, recent utility bill, or articles of incorporation.
