Does a video circulating on social media show how a microchip is removed from under the skin? No, that's not true: The video is an excerpt from a Netflix show called "Magic for Humans," in which magician and comedian Justin Willman convinces three people that the government has implanted a microchip under their skin, and agrees to "remove" it.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) on February 5, 2024. It opened (translated from Croatian to English by Lead Stories staff):
Do you believe now that people are already microchipped without knowing it?!?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Feb 7 09:14:26 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories conducted a Google image search (archived here) on February 7, 2024, and found that the footage shown in the TikTok video is from a Netflix series, classified as Reality TV and TV Comedy, called Magic for Humans (archived here).
It is an American TV show that premiered on August 17, 2018. The show features a popular magician, Justin WIllman, who performs magic tricks on the streets, asking people to participate. The footage in the TikTok comes from the third episode of the first season of the Netflix series, titled "Terrifying Tech" (archived here), where Willman refers to a conspiracy theory, according to which the government would be implanting microchips into ordinary people. In the episode, he convinces three people they were unknowingly microchipped by the government and performs a magic trick on them, pretending to remove the fake microchip from under their skin.
Other Lead Stories fact-checks on microchips allegedly contained in COVID-vaccines or implanted without people being aware of it can be found here.
