Summary: Media attention on a story or event is heightened during a breaking news event, where unclear facts and incomplete information increase speculation, rumours, and conspiracy theories, which are all vulnerable to manipulation.
Tactic: TA14 Develop Narratives
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| Incident | Descriptions given for this incident |
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| I00064 Tinder nightmares: the promise and peril of political bots | In the days leading up to the UK’s general election (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis), youths looking for love online encountered a whole new kind of Tinder nightmare. A group of young activists built a Tinder chatbot to co-opt profiles and persuade swing voters to support Labour. The bot accounts sent 30,000-40,000 messages to targeted 18-25 year olds in battleground constituencies like Dudley North, which Labour ended up winning by only 22 votes. The tactic was frankly ingenious. Tinder is a dating app where users swipe right to indicate attraction and interest in a potential partner. If both people swipe right on each other’s profile, a dialogue box becomes available for them to privately chat. After meeting their crowdfunding goal of only £500, the team built a tool which took over and operated the accounts of recruited Tinder-users. By upgrading the profiles to Tinder Premium, the team was able to place bots in any contested constituency across the UK (T0097.101: Local Persona). Once planted, the bots swiped right on all users in the attempt to get the largest number of matches and inquire into their voting intentions. Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Charlotte Goodman, the two campaigners leading the informal GE Tinder Bot team, explained in a recent opinion piece that if “the user was voting for a right-wing party or was unsure, the bot sent a list of Labour policies, or a criticism of Tory policies,” (T0136.006: Cultivate Support for Ally) with the aim “of getting voters to help oust the Conservative government.” Pieces in major media outlets like the New York Times and BBC have applauded these digital canvassers for their ingenuity and civic service. But upon closer inspection, the project reveals itself to be ethically dubious and problematic on a number of levels. How would these same outlets respond if such tactics were used to support the Tories? And what does this mean for the use of bots and other political algorithms in the future? The activists maintain that the project was meant to foster democratic engagement. But screenshots of the bots’ activity expose a harsher reality. Images of conversations between real users and these bots, posted on i-D, Mashable, as well as on Fowler and Goodman’s public Twitter accounts, show that the bots did not identify themselves as automated accounts, instead posing as the user whose profile they had taken over (T0146.007: Automated Account Asset, T0150.005: Compromised Asset, T0145.005: Compromised Persona, T0097.109: Romantic Suitor Persona). While conducting research for this story, it turned out that a number of our friends living in Oxford had interacted with the bot in the lead up to the election and had no idea that it was not a real person. |
| I00138 Images of Syrian Civil War Take on a Second Life in Gaza Conflict | [Bellingcat has] identified a trend of footage and images from Syria’s long-running civil war being recycled and misattributed to the [2023] Israel-Hamas conflict. This phenomenon has also been reported by other outlets including The New York Times. In particular, a number of prominent figures who have a history of denying the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attacks have re-shared Syrian civil war images, claiming they show Israel and Gaza. [...] Even beyond Pro-Assad accounts, the misuse of Syria war footage has continued across X since the latest conflict erupted in early October. In particular, there have been several videos and images shared on X misappropriating the suffering of Syrian children to spread disinformation. For example, on October 11 a video of a young boy covered in soot crying about the death of his family was posted to X. It racked up tens of thousands of retweets and likes and millions of views. Accounts claimed that he was a Palestinian child whose sisters were killed by Israel (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). However, this video was actually of a boy in Aleppo, Syria (T0162.004: Content Incorrectly Presented as Depicting Another Location. Like the hospital video Hinkle misleadingly shared, this video originated from the Aleppo Media Center’s YouTube page, where is was shared on April 11, 2014 (T0162.003: Historic Content Incorrectly Presented as Current). The boy can be seen from timestamp 01:40. In the viral version of the video on X, the AMC logo in the top left-hand corner was cropped out (T0165.002: Cropped Content, T0165.004: Source Edited Out of Content). The video had been clipped down in length (T0165.001: Clipped Content), and its colour tones adjusted (T0165: Edited Content), which aided in obscuring the original source. This was also debunked in a post on X on October 12 by Sardarizadeh, the BBC Verify journalist (T0160.002: Information is False). [...] One egregious example of misuse of images of Syrian children came from Sulaiman Ahmed, a journalist (T0097.102: Journalist Persona, T0143.001: Authentic Persona) and influencer with over 270,000 followers on X. On October 14, Ahmed posted “CHILD GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE 614 Palestinian children murdered by the Israeli IOF Forces” (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis) along with a picture of several dead children shrouded in white cloth, on the ground, with their faces visible. However, this gruesome image is not from Gaza but actually from Damascus (T0162.004: Content Incorrectly Presented as Depicting Another Location). The photo was taken in August 2013 (T0162.003: Historic Content Incorrectly Presented as Current), showing the evidence of chemical weapons attacks by pro-Assad forces as confirmed through multiple sources. In multiple articles, this photo is attributed to the aftermath of a chemical attack in Syria. [...] Sulaiman Ahmed also shared a video on October 13 depicting children searching for food among rubble and burnt buildings. In the post on X, he claimed that these were children in Gaza after an Israeli airstrike (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). However, the original source of the video indicates otherwise (T0160.002: Information is False). The original creator’s TikTok handle can be seen in the video uploaded by Ahmed. Thanks to this we can see that this video was posted there on June 21, well before the start of the recent war (T0162.003: Historic Content Incorrectly Presented as Current)., [Bellingcat has] identified a trend of footage and images from Syria’s long-running civil war being recycled and misattributed to the [2023] Israel-Hamas conflict. This phenomenon has also been reported by other outlets including The New York Times. In particular, a number of prominent figures who have a history of denying the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attacks have re-shared Syrian civil war images, claiming they show Israel and Gaza. [...] On November 19, there were news reports of the death of two Palestinian journalists in Gaza, Hassouna Sleem and Sari Mansour. Shortly thereafter, disinformation about murdered journalists appeared online. A video spread across X showing two men wearing bulletproof vests labelled “press”. The video begins with footage of rockets being fired behind the men before cutting to the same men unveiling rockets in the back of a truck. Users claimed that these were the two journalists killed in Gaza and that they were terrorists posing as journalists (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). Among the users who shared this claim are Bree A. Dail, a correspondent for the US conservative news site Daily Wire (T0097.102: Journalist Persona, T0143.001: Authentic Persona), a user claiming to be an independent citizen journalist (T0097.102: Journalist Persona), and an account pretending to be an official account for Hamas (T0097.110: Party Official Persona, T0143.002: Fabricated Persona). However, this video was actually filmed in Syria (T0162.004: Content Incorrectly Presented as Depicting Another Location) and was originally posted on October 7 (T0162.003: Historic Content Incorrectly Presented as Current). The man on the right in the video appears to be Jamil Al-Hassan, a journalist who has reported from Syria for months. Al-Hassan posted videos and images of the same content on his X and Instagram accounts. Al-Hassan, who describes himself as a “Media activist in the Syrian revolution” on his YouTube channel, has recently reported on retaliatory shelling by the Syrian government in early October, which Bellingcat covered here. Al-Hassan is still posting content and there have been no reports of his death (T0160.002: Information is False). |
| I00155 AI-generated clip shared as man escaping Syrian prison with spider | A clip of a man scrambling through a tunnel while holding a large spider has gone viral on social media, claiming to show a rescued prisoner escaping Sednaya (also known as Saydnaya) prison in Syria. The clip surfaced in multiple languages after Syrian rebels took control of Damascus, the capital of Syria, on December 8, 2024 (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). [...] A Facebook user shared the screenshot of the video and wrote, in parts, "Syria: The terrified look of a prisoner the moment he was rescued from the lower floors of the Red Wing in the notorious Sednaya prison in Damascus.” Similarly, an X user also shared the screenshot with the caption, “A prisoner was just found deep underground in Syria. His expression says it all. He never expected to be found…" (T0162.006: AI-Generated Content Incorrectly Presented as Depicting Reality, T0160.002: Information is False) [...] Upon conducting a reverse image search of keyframes from the viral video, we found that it was first shared on TikTok on December 3 with the caption, "No sir, I don't like it #fyp #creepytok #crawlspace #ai.” The user did not associate the video with Syria in the caption or the comments. The user's profile description also reads, “Follow for more weirdness 😵 |
| I00170 Kim Jong Un video doesn’t show him talking about Israel-Gaza conflict | A video of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un making a speech has been claimed to show him commenting on the Israel-Gaza conflict [...] A caption on the video states: “Kim Jong-un speech about Israel Palestine war [sic].” (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis)The fake subtitles say: “Under the Biden administration conflicts erupt yearly. This year a war begins between Israel and Palestine. Last year a war begins [sic] between Russia and Ukraine and two years ago billions worth of military equipment was left to the Taliban. “I’m afraid that if the Biden admin. does not cease to exist in the next election World War 3 may begin. Who knows what next year’s war will be. I support Donald Trump for president in 2024. Good luck to Mr Trump”. But the video predates the current conflict (T0162.003: Historic Content Incorrectly Presented as Current) and the subtitles are fake (T0162.001: Incorrect Subtitled Speech Reframes Context). Kim Jong Un was actually speaking at a military parade to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the ruling party and thanked citizens for overcoming unexpected obstacles. According to Politico, he “extended an olive branch” to South Korea and “avoided direct criticism of Washington”. The video was taken in October 2020, before the current Israel-Gaza conflict or the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It also predates the US election in November 2020, when President Biden was elected. A section of the footage being shared (T0165.001: Clipped Content) matches video from BBC reporting of his speech (T0162.002: Edits Made to News Report which Reframe Context). The BBC doesn’t feature a direct translation of all that he said, but text on screen says: “He said no one could appreciate [North Korean troops’] ‘heroic devotion’ without ‘shedding tears of gratitude’.” |
| I00206 Fact check: Barack Obama tweet about Donald Trump's Twitter ban is fake | President Donald Trump's permanent suspension from Twitter sent shock waves through the internet, bringing forth a mix of reactions from lawmakers, celebrities and beyond (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). While former President Barack Obama has not publicly commented on Trump's ban from the social media platform, one Facebook post claims to show his reaction. "Man do I love having this Twitter account, the ability to connect to so many millions of people, to express my feelings and views, to know that all major media outlets and world leaders are reading these words, that they are recorded for posterity. How awesome is that?" reads a purported screenshot of a tweet from Obama. The screenshot, which has over 1,000 shares, was shared by the Facebook page Boycott All Things Trump with the caption, "#ForeverPresident Barack Obama trolls the orange user not to be found." The post claims the tweet was shared on Jan. 9 at 6:52 a.m., with 2,000 likes and 250 retweets. The tweet appears to have a blue checkmark and the profile image matches the one seen on Obama's official Twitter profile. However, there is no evidence that the tweet is authentic (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). The Facebook page does not have a way to be contacted. USA TODAY found no reports of the purported tweet; it does not appear on Obama's Twitter timeline and the 44th president has not released any statement regarding Trump’s ban from the platform. As of Jan. 11, Obama's latest tweets appear to be on Jan. 8 on the response of Capitol police to the violence that took place in Washington, D.C. An archived page from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine of Obama's official Twitter page on Jan. 9, the day the post claims the tweet was posted, also shows no such post. |
| I00211 FALSE: Greenhills hostage taker ‘found dead in jail cell’ | Claim: Alchie Paray, the sacked security guard who recently (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis) held dozens of people hostage at Greenhills Shopping Center, was found dead inside his jail cell. The claim was posted on the website randomnames.club using the headline: “ABS CBN NEWS: Hostage Taker na si Archie (sic) Paray Natagpuang Patay sa Loob ng Kanyang Selda.” The article only contained a video with a thumbnail of a blurred black-and-white photo of a man. The video also used the ABS-CBN logo. (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona) Separately, another video posted by Youtube channel Latest Trending claimed that Paray committed suicide inside his jail cell. The video’s thumbnail appeared to be a GMA News report with a photo of Paray (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). The article and the video were both flagged by Facebook Claim Check, a monitoring tool that detects viral posts with potentially false information. According to social media tool Crowdtangle, the article was posted 9 times on Facebook by pages and groups with a collective total of over 1.1 million followers. Rating: FALSE The facts: ABS-CBN News and GMA News did not report on Paray’s death, nor did any other legitimate news sites. The website that posted the false claim used a video report of the death of Genesis Argoncillo which occurred in 2018 (T0162.003: Historic Content Incorrectly Presented as Current). Argoncillo died in police custody after being beaten to death. Upon checking the Youtube link of the video, it redirected (T0149.004: Redirecting Domain Asset) to ABS-CBN’s TV Patrol report on the death of Argoncillo in 2018. |
| I00216 Rats, bedbugs, tuberculosis, and financial problems. Russian propaganda disinformation about the Paris Olympics | [Translated from original in Russian] Russian propaganda began actively attacking France and its President Emmanuel Macron in connection with a different news story. On February 27, Macron stated that he wouldn't rule out sending French troops to Ukraine, and subsequently reiterated his stand. Soon after, in Telegram channels that regularly publish disinformation, the French president temporarily eclipsed his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy: it was Macron, for example, who was the subject of the majority of fake magazine covers in the first months of 2024 (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). By the end of March, the fakers' attention had shifted to a project of great importance to Macron and his government: the Paris Olympics. Bedbugs and rats In the second half of 2023, the internet was flooded with reports of bedbugs in France. They were found everywhere: in apartments, hospitals, schools, and public transportation. But only some of the reports were true. The problem does exist: for example, BBC Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield cited experts in one of his reports who said it occurs at the end of every summer. But the reports about the bedbug infestation, which allegedly led to the possible cancellation of the Games and the widespread closure of hospitals, turned out to be false (T0160.002: Information is False). They were created by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. A striking example of this mixture of truth and lies is the news about a bedbug-infested hospital in the northern French city of Arras. On April 9, 2024, the newspaper La Voix du Nord reported that the patient found with bedbugs had been isolated, while the other patients were transferred to nearby healthcare facilities. Major French media outlets, including Le Figaro , later reported on this story . On April 11, the Telegram channel " Shkvarka 2.0 " expanded on this story, claiming that 11 hospitals and 24 emergency rooms had allegedly closed in France in recent weeks for similar reasons. The post was accompanied by a video featuring the Le Figaro logo, emphasizing that this all happened approximately 100 days before the Olympic opening ceremony (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). The French outlet did release a video about the events in Arras on April 9, but it made no mention of hospitals being closed nationwide. The fake copy included fragments containing false information, and one frame immediately featured captions in English. To illustrate the fake, the creators used a stock photo from the internet. The Alamy photo agency website states that it is of an emergency room in London. The day after the video with the fake fragments was published, a report appeared on the PoliTube_news Telegram channel claiming that French intelligence services had allegedly initiated an investigation into the journalists who reported on the closure of the Arras hospital. The post was also accompanied by a video, this time featuring the BFMTV logo. The video claimed that the French Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) was investigating reporters from BFMTV, La Voix du Nord, and France 3. Le Point contacted all the journalists mentioned in the article, who said they were hearing about it for the first time and laughed at the news. Editorial management took the fake news more seriously: BFMTV CEO Marc-Olivier Faugiel promised to sue for illegal use of the company's logo and announced that La Voix du Nord would join the lawsuit (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona, T0160.002: Information is False). The video's fake nature is evidenced not only by the journalists' statements but also by technical details. BFMTV's short videos on social media are designed completely differently, from the font to the color of the captions. The creators of the fake video chose a font similar to the one the publication uses in its video previews, but the text in the BFMTV videos themselves is formatted differently. The creators of Olympic fakes haven't forgotten another favorite tactic: fake graffiti (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage). Over the past two years, "Verified" has debunked nearly two dozen fake street art posts, all created using the same principle: digitally overlaying a drawing onto a real photo. For example, on March 29, the Telegram channel " Shkvarka 2.0 " published a photo of a mural depicting the "symbol of the Paris Olympics"—a bug twirling gymnastics hoops in the colors of the Olympic rings. A week and a half later, on April 9, the channel " V Ruka Kremlya Z " showed a new mural on the wall of another building, a photo allegedly sent by a subscriber. "What are the Paris Olympics based on? Three sewer rats and a giant bug. This is the attitude of the French towards the upcoming Olympics depicted on a huge mural in Paris," the post read. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find the exact locations of the murals based on the images (the photographers took pains to avoid including any identifying marks), but there's no doubt that street art like this has never existed on the streets of the French capital (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage). Firstly, the images were posted by channels that have been repeatedly caught spreading fakes. Secondly, there are no photos of these murals from other angles online. And finally, no French media outlets covered them. However, these fakes didn't garner much interest from Russian-speaking Telegram users either: according to "Verified" estimates based on TGStat data, both stories received a combined total of approximately 150,000 views. From late March to early April, pro-Kremlin channels generated numerous such stories. For example, a video about elevated levels of a pesticide used to kill rats and bedbugs in Parisian tap water was allegedly released by Le Figaro (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona), citing Professor Yves Lévy (the professor is real, but the citation is not available in open sources (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution)). Or the story about the bedbug-infested Olympic Village—this time, the post was accompanied by a fragment of an unrelated Euronews broadcast, with a feed from the AFP agency (the agency that allegedly broke the news) shown on the right side of the screen (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona, T0084.002: Plagiarise Content). In one of the stories, the authors of the fake attempted to combine several themes: bedbugs, rats, political scandal, and the general negative attitude toward the Olympics. It was first published on April 18 by the Telegram channel " Primorsky zov ." It claimed that former French Economy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo compared the Paris Olympics to "a gypsy camp that comes to the city, provides a momentary joy, and leaves behind financial losses, dirt, disease, and rats." A video featuring the TF1 logo claimed that the former minister's remark sparked a scandal: Norman Rudevich, head of the International Roma Union, allegedly condemned Borloo for discrimination. This fake is a mixed bag. Firstly, it's unlikely that a French television channel would have presented Borloo as a former Minister of the Economy – he held that post for exactly a month in 2007, but spent three years as Minister of Ecology, Energy, and Sustainable Development. Secondly, he never uttered such a phrase (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). In February 2023, Senator Hervé Marcel, head of Borloo's Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) party, did indeed refer to a "gypsy camp ," but this inappropriate comparison was made to the left-wing France Insoumise party's behavior in the National Assembly during the debate on pension reform, not to the upcoming Olympics. Marcel later apologized , but Borloo had nothing to do with this story. Finally, the video itself is fake. TF1 has never produced a video like this (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona), and the footage of Borloo is excerpts from his interview with France Inter radio on June 22, 2023 (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content), in which he didn't mention the Olympics, gypsies, rats, or bedbugs. Pollution of the Seine The Seine plays a key role in the symbolism of the 2024 Olympics. The opening ceremony, scheduled for July 26, will take place on the river. The delegations of the participating teams will be carried on 160 boats past all the main Parisian landmarks: Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre. However, the Seine has never been known for its cleanliness, and the French authorities are doing everything possible to improve this. Macron has repeatedly promised to swim in the Seine himself before the Olympics to prove the safety of the water in Paris's main river—and he's not alone. Mayor Anne Hidalgo and IOC President Thomas Bach have also made similar statements. In March and April, fakers began to exploit the Seine's pollution theme (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). On April 16, the Telegram channel " Z_O_V " reported that ironic graffiti had appeared on the Seine embankment: it depicted the three-eyed fish Blinky (who lives in ponds near the nuclear power plant in The Simpsons) jumping out of the river and claiming the water in the Seine is absolutely clean. This story turned out to be one of the most viral of all Olympic fakes studied by "Verified," garnering over 250,000 views on Telegram (largely due to a post on the major channel " Two Majors "). We determined the exact location from which the photograph that served as the basis for the fake was taken: it is the Left Bank of the Seine, and the embankment where the graffiti is supposedly located is opposite, on the Île de la Cité, not far from Notre-Dame Cathedral. However, it is unlikely that Parisians saw this drawing, since not a single French media outlet reported on it, and local residents and numerous tourists did not post photos on social media (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage). Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels also exploited the Seine's polluted water theme using another of their traditional methods : a fake cover (T0161.001: Impersonated Content). The story about Macron's promise to swim in the river was depicted using a fake cover from the German satirical magazine Titanic. "I will prove that the water in the Seine is absolutely safe for the Olympic Games," Macron says in the cartoon, then dives in and emerges a mutant. The real April issue of Titanic has a completely different cover (with Hitler smoking marijuana)—the magazine typically covers German news, not events relevant to other countries. Furthermore, the authors never corrected the errors found on other fake covers of the publication: for example, the word "issue" (Ausgabe) is misspelled (Aufgabe). Ukrainians and tuberculosis Sanitary and epidemiological fakes about the Paris Olympics aren't limited to bedbugs, rats, and dirty water in the Seine. Another popular story concerns tuberculosis, which Ukrainians are bringing to France. One claim claims that 85% of Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel who arrived in France for rehabilitation were diagnosed with the disease, and that the doctors treating them also became infected. A post that first appeared on the Shkvarka News channel on March 27 cited screenshots from videos featuring the logos of France 24 and RFI as evidence (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). Four days later, the same channel reported that French authorities would introduce mandatory tuberculosis testing for Ukrainian refugees, and on April 18, they updated the story, claiming that $2 billion had been allocated for testing, and that luggage would also be checked for parasites. In all three cases, the primary sources were the Telegram channels "Shkvarka News" and "Shkvarka 2.0," where posts appeared simultaneously. The last two publications about Ukrainian refugees included videos with the RFI logo as evidence (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). The latter is the most detailed and deserves a closer look. The video cites a document allegedly from the French Ministry of Labor and Health, which outlines stricter controls for Ukrainians arriving in the country. It concludes by stating that those who refuse to undergo testing for tuberculosis, hepatitis A, B, and C, HIV, and other diseases, including COVID-19, will be deported within 48 hours. The ministry's website doesn't list such an order in the official documents section , and no documents signed by the minister were issued on April 17 (the date indicated on the document in the video) (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). Searching the website for the words "tuberculosis" and "Ukraine" reveals only a memo drafted in the spring of 2022, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. It states that the fight against tuberculosis in Ukraine is not as intensive as in France, so adults are advised to get tested. Testing is mandatory for children. However, no penalties are stipulated for refusal, and the document has not been updated since the summer of 2022. However, as in previous cases, the problem exists: in its March report, the French National Health Agency noted the rise in registered tuberculosis cases in the country and cited statistics showing that the incidence rate among Ukrainian refugees is 197 per 100,000 people (for comparison, in France as a whole, it is no more than 10 per 100,000 people) (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). Nevertheless, vaccination remains voluntary, the report emphasizes. Finally, the videos themselves have no connection to RFI or France 24. There are no videos about Ukrainians and tuberculosis on either RFI's website or its YouTube channel. Furthermore, on March 28, the company issued a special statement condemning the use of its logo to create a fake news story about allegedly infected Ukrainian soldiers. And fact-checkers at France 24 mentioned this series of fakes in one of their analyses. "The Games Will Be a Disaster": Sponsor Withdrawal and Spectator Problems The leitmotif of Olympic fakes is the impending failure of the Games. The stories described above described problems that would allegedly seriously complicate the competition. In the reality created by the fakers, this was confirmed by the decisions made by the competition sponsors and tourists planning to attend. On April 8, a post appeared on the Telegram channel "Mariupol Party Girl" claiming that three companies—Spotify, Lego, and Hochland—had disappeared from the sponsors section of the 2024 Olympics website. Attached to the post was a video featuring the TF1 logo , which supported the news with screenshots of the website and a commentary by economist Jacques Attali. These companies are indeed not listed in the "Partners" section of the official Olympics website , which is not surprising: none of them have publicly announced any such contracts with the IOC or the Paris Organizing Committee (T0160.002: Information is False). The Ukrainian fact-checking project " Gvara Media " received comments from official representatives of Spotify, Lego, and Hochland, who assured that they have never been partners of the Paris Olympics. Jacques Attali also responded to the inquiry, stating that he neither said nor thought the words attributed to him in the video (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). Finally, the video is also not available on TF1 platforms (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels claim that not only sponsors but also spectators are abandoning the Olympics. On March 27, the aforementioned " Shkvarka 2.0 " channel posted a video featuring the France 24 logo, claiming that Airbnb would automatically make Olympic bookings in France non-refundable due to mass cancellations. In March alone, Airbnb users allegedly canceled over 23,000 bookings, costing the service over €600,000 in losses, the video claimed. Fact-checkers from France 24's Les Observateurs project verified that their own channel had not produced such a video (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona) and then contacted Airbnb and the expert mentioned in the video for comment. The short-term rental service stated that the cited figures were fictitious and that there were no mass cancellations during the Olympics (T0164.001: Narrative Presents Fabricated Statistics as Genuine Data, T0160.002: Information is False). Meanwhile, the British company Verdant Leisure stated that their tourism expert, Francesca Holdsworth, had not made any such comments to anyone (T0161.002: Statement Incorrectly Presented as Made by Individual or Institution). Finally, a logical plotline in this alternative Olympic universe is the persecution of those who "tell the truth." At the very beginning, we reported on the fake investigation that French intelligence services allegedly launched into journalists who wrote about the closure of the Arras hospital. But such a story is not unique. On April 2, the same Shkvarka News reported on censorship imposed on French journalists—they were allegedly banned from reporting on issues related to the preparation and hosting of the Olympics. A video confirming this news features the BBC logo, and the investigative project Bellingcat is cited as the source. This scheme (a BBC video citing Bellingcat) has become as commonplace as fake magazine covers. At the end of 2023, "Verified" already wrote in detail about the flood of fakes under the British Broadcasting Corporation's brand. This video is no different (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). It consists of stock photos and videos, excerpts from speeches (in this case, TF1 journalist Samira El Ghadir and the channel's executive director, Rodolphe Bellmer) (T0084.002: Plagiarise Content), and screenshots of earlier Olympic fakes are shown as "true reports." Fact-checkers from " Gvara Media " received a comment from Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, who called the video a fake. Bellmer's speech about the alleged censorship introduced in 2024, used in the video, is his speech at the launch of one of TF1's projects in 2023 (T0162.003: Historic Content Incorrectly Presented as Current). An obvious continuation of the story about the French authorities "concealing the truth" is their crackdown on criticism, including visual criticism. On April 27, the latest fake we've discovered, related to street art and the Olympics, appeared. Simultaneously, the Telegram channels " Shkvarka News " and " Shkvarka 2.0 " reported that an unnamed Parisian municipality had destroyed a supposed €2 million Banksy work. "A drawing of an athlete throwing a rocket appeared in Paris. The word '2024' is written on the athlete's chest. Apparently a reference to the Olympics. But the French are so obsessed with threats surrounding the Olympics that they painted over the graffiti," the posts stated, which garnered only 7,500 views. The drawing is based on a real work by Banksy, which he created back in 2012 in the run-up to the London Olympics (T0161.003: Falsified Graffiti or Signage, T0161.001: Impersonated Content). Since the photographs this time showed parts of other buildings, "Verified" was able to pinpoint the exact location . The photo, which was then overlaid with a reworked Banksy mural, was taken in a location already familiar to our regular readers—the commune of Montreuil, east of Paris. Specifically, it was taken on the wall of a building at 31 rue Voltaire. This is the eighth graffiti we've analyzed that was allegedly created in the same area (although it was once claimed to be from Brussels). To further enhance the credibility of the story, the fakers also fabricated screenshots of Instagram stories and website pages from the French newspapers Le Parisien and Le Monde, respectively. Neither the former nor the latter published such materials (T0161.001: Impersonated Content, T0097.202: News Outlet Persona). [...] In this article, "Verified" covered only a portion of the fakes about the Paris Olympics created by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels from late March to late April. There are over three dozen of them—and these are just the ones we were able to find. They employed the full arsenal of tools actively used by fakers over the past two years: fake videos from European media outlets, magazine covers, and non-existent graffiti. Some fakes are multi-layered: one media outlet supposedly quotes another, which in turn cites the opinion of a real expert (who, of course, never actually said those words). Clearly, the production line for creating such fakes is well-established. However, there's a mystery. None of these fakes went truly viral, with only a few amassing hundreds of thousands of views combined: for example, the post about tuberculosis and Ukrainian refugees only had 130,000. The rest barely circulated online, including in French-language posts on X. The goal of these fakes is likely to gain critical mass and create the impression that the Paris Olympics are a surefire failure. Real problems (bedbugs and rats, pollution in the Seine, the cost of the Olympics) are greatly exaggerated in these publications and supplemented with false details. |
| I00228 Rosie Holt: the satirist whose ‘Tory MP’ video had so many fooled | The video was, according to former Ukip leader Henry Bolton, evidence of the declining quality of MPs. Anthony Grayling, the philosopher, described her as a “bald-faced emetic” and Philip Pullman, the author, said he was “aghast”. Their collective outrage was directed at the words of Rosie Holt who, asked by an interviewer whether she attended any of the Downing Street parties, said that until Sue Gray completes her report “your guess is as good as mine: I don’t know whether I attended the party” (T0068: Respond to Breaking News Event or Active Crisis). Holt added: “If there was a party in lockdown when we told everyone they couldn’t even attend funerals, but no one knew about it, was there a party?” At a glance, Holt may be hard to distinguish from the declining number of Tory MPs prepared to stand up for the prime minister, but she is in fact a satirist (T0097.110: Party Official Persona, T0143.004: Parody Persona) – an actor and comedian with a strong line in parodies of the political speech that veers into drivel. This video sketch (T0087: Develop Video-Based Content, T0160.005: Content Produced as Satire) has taken off – 6 million views on Twitter so far – partly because “an awful lot of people” think it’s real, she said. “I don’t go in there to hoodwink people,” she told the Observer. “I get a bit unnerved when lots of people think it’s real because that’s not what I’m trying to do. “But there’s also an awful lot of people who do get it. And I’m quite good at screening out the negative stuff. Some people say ‘oh, you shouldn’t joke about things like this – it’s a serious subject’. “But I’m a big believer in laughing at things that make you sad and angry. And there’s so many things happening with this government at the moment there is always just so much material.” This particular video was created by splicing Holt’s footage with questions from a Sky News reporter to Boris Johnson in which he dodged questions about whether he had gone to the 20 May 2020 garden party (T0162.002: Edits Made to News Report which Reframe Context). |
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