There is no evidence of a World Economic Forum document that “confirms that 6 billion humans will die by 2025”

An Instagram post on August 24 sounded alarm bells about the impending disappearance of a large portion of the world’s population.

According to the article, 6 million human beings will die by 2025 (almost three-quarters of the world’s population in 2024). Its source? An alleged document from the World Economic Forum.

“WEF document confirms that 6 billion humans will die by 2025,” the post reads.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat fake news and misinformation in its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram.)

We found an article with the same headline published on August 22 on The People’s Voice, a website known for spreading misinformation. We have repeatedly fact-checked the site’s fake headlines and the author’s name, Baxter Dmitry, often appears on disinformation sites.

(Instagram screenshot)

The article took the claim a step further, saying: “A World Economic Forum report hiding in plain sight confirms that more than six billion people will die by 2025.”

However, the article does not identify or link to any World Economic Forum document that fits that description. The World Economic Forum is an international nonprofit organization that fosters cooperation among political, business, academic and other leaders.

PolitiFact reached out to the World Economic Forum but did not immediately receive a response.

The People’s Voice article claimed that the website Deagel.com — a site that does not appear to identify its owner and calls itself a “guide to military equipment and civil aviation,” with information sourced from sites including some owned by the Russian state government — predicted the 6 billion deaths, linking only to an Internet Archive version of the 2025 forecast, which the article said had been removed from Deagel.com “sometime in 2020.”

The Deagel.com forecast predicted a drop in the total population of many countries, including the United States, which it said would decline from 326.6 million people to 99.5 million. However, the archived site does not cite a time frame for its prediction.

At the bottom of the archived Deagel.com page, a note reads: “There is a small portion of the data that comes from a variety of hidden sources, such as Internet gurus, anonymous reports and others… We assume that official data, especially economic data, published by governments is false, manipulated or distorted to some degree.”

The note also said: “Please note that the forecast is nothing more than a model, whether flawed or correct.”

The People’s Voice spun a tortuous and uncorroborated story linking Deagel.com to the World Economic Forum.

The world’s population is currently 8.2 billion people. We found no reputable news organization or credible information showing that a World Economic Forum document “confirmed that 6 billion human beings” (i.e. over 70% of the world’s population) will die by 2025.

We rate this statement Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.