Satirical Article About Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Viral as Real

The satirical article claimed that Parag Agrawal was arrested for possession of child pornography.

Fact-Check: The article claiming former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was arrested is false. 

(Photo: The Quint)

The screenshot of a news article about former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is going viral on the internet.

The claim: "Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of Twitter, has been arrested for possession of child pornography after a tip off from Elon Musk," said the article published in one Vancouver Times, published on 23 December.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

(Archives of more such posts can be found here and here.)

The truth: The article was published on a satirical website that regularly publishes such stories. We also didn't find any such news report from a trusted news website.

How did we find that out:

• We conducted a keyword search to look for news stories about Agrawal's arrest but could not find any report from a trusted news publication.

• We then looked at the website that published the news article Vancouver Times.

• The article had a note at the end of the page that said, "This is a satire article", and was in the "SATIRE" section of the page.

A note in the article. 

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

• We also found a disclaimer on the website: "All information in the Service is provided 'as is,' with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information."

• We also looked at the FBI database in San Francisco and found no mention of Agrawal's arrest.

Vancouver Times, a source of misinformation: Articles and stories published on the website that has previously been shared as real and has been debunked by The Quint's WebQoof team and other fact-checkers.

Conclusion: A satirical article claiming that former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was arrested by the FBI has gone viral as real.

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