President Joe Biden is alive, despite fake information posted on Ancestry.com

"Joe Biden is not real," reads the text in a recent Instagram video. 

The evidence that the commander-in-chief is an impostor? A screenshot from Ancestry.com "showing he actually died in 2018 in Guantanamo, Cuba."

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

As Snopes reported, such a page did appear on Ancestry.com but appears to have since been deleted. But the page was archived May 28 and June 12. It says Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. — the president’s full name —  and includes other factual details about his life such as his birth place (Scranton, Pennsylvania) and birth date (Nov. 20, 1942).

But it also says he died in 2018 in Guantánamo, Cuba, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. 

U.S. Army records show there’s no grave for Biden at the cemetery, and a cemetery spokesperson confirmed to Snopes that Biden is "not laid to rest" there.

Featured Fact-check

Facebook posts

stated on August 30, 2024 in a post

"Samsung drops out of $1 billion advertising campaign with Olympics."

Anyone can upload information to Ancestry, according to the site’s submission agreement page. 

"The decision to upload personal information to the Ancestry website is your responsibility," the page says. "All information that you post will be displayed and is available for others to search, view or hear."

The site also reserves the right to "remove any user provided content which comes to our attention and which we believe, in our sole discretion, is illegal, obscene, indecent, defamatory, incites racial or ethnic hatred, violates the rights of others or otherwise violates this agreement."

We’ve previously fact-checked and rated Pants on Fire claims that Biden is in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and that the current president is a Biden impostor. Such developments would draw intense, global news coverage but there are none. 

As of June 13, Biden was in Italy, participating in public events with world leaders and holding a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy.

Biden didn’t die in Guantánamo in 2018, and a since-deleted Ancestry page doesn’t prove otherwise. We rate this post Pants on Fire!

CORRECTION, July 25, 2024: President Joe Biden was born Nov. 20, 1942. An earlier version of the post contained the wrong date. It has been corrected.