Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. We’ve reached out, as common, to ask in regards to the Trump telephone’s whereabouts. As common, we’re nonetheless ready for a response. Within the meantime, some spectacular alleged gross sales figures have gone viral — however they could be too good to be true.
This week, I noticed one thing new in my common scouring of the net for updates on the Trump telephone: a repeated declare that Trump Cellular has secured practically 600,000 preorders for the telephone. With a $100 deposit per machine, that may make for a tidy $60 million payday for Trump Cellular already.
It’s curious timing, coming simply earlier than yesterday’s open letter to the FTC from Elizabeth Warren and a gaggle of different Democrats, calling on the company to open an investigation into the corporate’s alleged “false promoting and misleading practices.” Not everybody agrees Trump Cellular deserves the Democrats’ consideration, partly from the idea that not that many individuals are more likely to have put cash down for the telephone within the first place. As one commenter on my story yesterday advised, “I can’t think about loads of people have been dumb sufficient to fall for this.” However in accordance with these new figures, over half one million folks have been.
There’s only one downside: I can’t discover a shred of proof that this determine is true. Actually, it appears to hint again to a single viral, nameless X put up and is a microcosm of how the trendy media panorama and AI chatbots can mix to offer falsities the sheen of respectability.
I first noticed the determine in, of all locations, the Threads feed of California governor Gavin Newsom’s press office, which had shared a screenshot of a tweet of a Grok abstract making the declare. Reliable, proper?
The Grok post cites “studies from sources like Fortune, NPR, and The Guardian” for the 600,000 preorders, however a fast search of their latest output exhibits no signal of the quantity. I needed to know the place Grok bought it from, if not there.
A fast Google search turns up an terrible lot of social media posts, from accounts each large and small, but in addition a number of tales in seemingly reputable publications. India’s Economic Times and Hindustan Times each reported a extra particular determine of 590,000 preorders, referencing an unspecified Related Press report because the supply.
The one latest AP protection of Trump Cellular was this story from last week, summarizing the repeated delays, which makes no declare to particular preorder figures. I reached out to the group, and its VP of company communications, Lauren Easton, confirmed to me that “AP’s unique tales by no means contained such a quantity.”
The plot thickens. I attempted the authors of the 2 tales citing AP, and one bought again to me. Hindustan Occasions author Shamik Banerjee known as the quotation “a typo,” and advised me that the determine was in reality taken from The Occasions of India.
The Times of India story, which is bylined solely to the newspaper’s way of life desk, is extra clear in its sourcing: a viral put up by a meme account.
Bricktop_NAFO, a seemingly British account with simply over 99,000 followers, principally posts pro-Ukraine content material, interspersed with unrelated memes and joke posts. It does an everyday line in anti-Trump posts too, and on January eleventh, it shared the declare that “590,000 idiots bought Trumps Cell phone [sic] that went on sale.”
So far as I can inform, that is the oldest on-line point out of the 590,000 determine, although the 600,000 quantity appeared in a Facebook post back in December, albeit one with no likes, no feedback, and solely a single, personal share. Bricktop_NAFO’s put up, against this, has been considered 2.8 million instances in accordance with X and reposted one other 8,000. It’s floor zero for this explicit pressure of misinformation.
I reached out to Bricktop_NAFO, each in its DMs and in a public reply to the put up, to ask if it had a supply for the declare, however the account proprietor didn’t reply in time for publication. I additionally requested if it may level me towards the $45 Temu telephone it claimed was a match — my colleague Allison Johnson beforehand tried, and failed, to find an exact dupe of the T1 Phone, and so far as I’m conscious, nobody has efficiently matched its spec sheet and design to an present handset.
The ripple impact from this single tweet has been spectacular. X’s personal share figures above don’t embrace the numerous different posts which have picked up the made-up quantity and run with it, even taking it so far as Governor Newsom’s press workplace. It’s been lined by a number of publications, now introduced as reality on MSN.com and tech web site Phone Arena. And that protection has helped it to filter into the chatbots and never simply Grok — Gemini and ChatGPT have been each comfortable to verify to me that 600,000 T1 Telephones have been ordered to date, the previous falsely attributing the quantity to the Related Press, and the latter to Telephone Area.
As for what number of Trump Telephone preorders have really been positioned? Nobody outdoors the corporate is aware of, and to date, it’s not telling. I requested the Trump Cellular press workplace for an precise preorder determine however, consider it or not, I haven’t heard again.
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