While the 2024 presidential election dominated American news headlines in 2024, a lot more than just politics captured Snopes readers' attention.
Based on our site's traffic analytics, more people read fact checks about sports stars like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Brittney Griner and Aaron Rodgers than any others. Readers also gravitated to pages about high-profile celebrities such as Sean "Diddy" Combs and Elon Musk, as well as rumors about a giant sea creature and musicians' concert tours.
Compared to all rumors we fact-checked in 2024, the 10 fact checks below attracted the most readers, ranked from highest to lowest since January. Snopes' archives contributed to this report.
Heading into 2025, we'll continue to bring context and clarity to the day's hottest claims, no matter their level of absurdity. You can submit tips for our fact-checkers to consider, and, if you find our work useful and want to help sustain it, consider becoming a member.
In April, a paid advertisement with a picture of New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers was displayed on Facebook claiming, "Aaron Rodgers facing lifetime suspension." Users who clicked on the ad were led to what appeared to be an article on FoxNews.com. However, the story was completely false and had been made up to promote a scam for Bloom CBD Gummies.
The Facebook page America's Last Line Of Defense posted a meme in June claiming the USA Basketball Women's National Team had added Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark to its roster. According to the post, Clark joined only after the team released Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner for "undisclosed reasons." The alleged news wasn't real.
WNBA star Angel Reese was allegedly kicked off the U.S. team and facing a $1 million fine for purported comments about Caitlin Clark, according to a June rumor by the Facebook account The Patriots Lovers. However, the claim wasn't true. The Facebook account describes its output as satire or parody.
Starting in July 2024, a set of images allegedly showing giant axolotl-like creatures circulated on social media. The images were inconsistent with basic facts about axolotls, a critically endangered type of salamander, and displayed signs of having been created via artificial intelligence (AI) software.
Throughout U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, critics raised questions about comments he made years prior about violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the removal of a confederate statue. They accused him of calling neo-Nazis and white supremacists "very fine people," though his actual comments deserved more context than that.
Early in the year, rumors spread on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube that suggested Justin Bieber was releasing a new song with a lyric about Sean "Diddy" Combs. But there was no concrete evidence to prove the song existed.
The Facebook page America's Last Line of Defense posted a meme in September that claimed Kid Rock had canceled six concert dates with Tim McGraw. The rumor was not true. The Facebook page is part of a group of websites and social media pages that describes its output as satirical and has a history of making up stories for shares and comments.
In July, social media users claimed that Vice President-elect JD Vance wrote in his 2016 memoir about having sex with "an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions." The rumor was not true. Vance's memoir did not contain any such passage (including in the first edition, as we later made clear in a second fact check).
This fictional story about "The View" and Musk was likely written by AI software. It spread via a Facebook page named Love Style, which posted in April, "Elon Musk Fires Entire Cast of 'The View' After Acquiring ABC."