“Professor Schwab’s health is excellent. » This is what a representative of the World Economic Forum assures 20 minutesin response to rumors spreading online about a hospitalization of Klaus Schwab, 86 years old.
This German is the founder of this event which takes place every year in Davos in Switzerland. Heads of state and government meet business leaders, as well as financiers or representatives of international institutions such as the UN or NATO. A week of exchanges which fuels numerous conspiratorial discourses online almost every year.
Since this weekend, it is the very founder of the Forum who has been the target of a rumor: several messages relayed on X in English and French claim that Klaus Schwab has been hospitalized. None of these posts give a source for this claim.
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The Forum denies this rumor to 20 minutes : “These claims are completely unfounded. Professor Schwab’s health is excellent. »
The rumor seems to have emerged on Saturday on the English-speaking site Weekly Crier, as spotted by our colleagues from the AP agency. On this obscure site, whose domain name was registered in January, there are no signatures or names of team members. However, in an “about” section, the site manager(s) indicate that “satire” or “humorous opinion articles” may be published.
The rumor then gained momentum on X, where a tweet in English on the subject was seen a million times. A “trending” section on this social network continues to aggregate tweets on this subject. This section is preceded by a summary written by artificial intelligence. On Monday, we still read in this summary that Klaus Schwab had been hospitalized, even if a warning warned to “check the results” aggregated by this AI.
This Tuesday, the summary was modified to deny the rumor. On the other hand, the collection always includes tweets which repeat the misinformation.
As the Forum spokesperson points out, “Professor Schwab and the World Economic Forum are regularly the target of conspiracy stories, as well as disinformation and misinformation campaigns.” We had already looked at comments by Klaus Schwab which had been taken out of context, or at a meeting in Davos to anticipate the occurrence of a possible epidemic, a meeting which had stirred up the conspiracy sphere.