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I bust fake news for Snopes. Here's how I spot viral hoaxes, photoshops, 'deepfakes,' and misinformation.

Madison Dapcevich   

I bust fake news for Snopes. Here's how I spot viral hoaxes, photoshops, 'deepfakes,' and misinformation.
  • There's a plethora of mis- and disinformation online, about everything from COVID-19 to the invasion of Ukraine.
  • Every day, fact-checkers like me are tasked with determining what's real and what's not.

As millions of Ukrainian refugees have flooded through their country's borders, so too have false claims and rumors inundated the internet. Falsehoods continue to spread online like digital wildfire, and it's become the responsibility of people like me, a fact-checker at Snopes, to douse the flames with accuracy.

In the aftermath of Russia's initial attack on Ukraine, the Snopes editorial team has seen a steady uptick in false or misleading information shared online, particularly when it comes to mislabeled or outdated imagery posturing as new or relevant. From the "Ghost of Kyiv" video (which was created using a digital-simulation game) to a clip that claimed to show Russian and Ukrainian soldiers dancing together (even though the footage predated the 2022 conflict), our newsroom has ramped up efforts to identify falsehoods online.

Many social media platforms have initiated campaigns against misinformation. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, YouTube announced it would remove videos "denying, minimizing, or trivializing" the conflict. Facebook has led contentious campaigns to battle falsehoods online, while Instagram has started flagging posts with misinformation.

Despite these policies, fact-checkers are overwhelmed by a digital onslaught of false information available to millions of users at the click of a mouse or screen-tap of a finger. This is particularly true on the video-sharing app TikTok, which itself acknowledged that the platform "isn't the go-to app to follow news or politics." Even so, a wide breadth of misleading or outright false videos we see have originated on TikTok.

Here's how my news team determines what's authentic and what's fake by using our Snopes-ing 101: The Fact-Checkers' Toolbox.

The difference between misinformation and disinformation

Two terms fact-checkers see thrown around social media are mis- and disinformation. While the two are closely related, there are minor differences. Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information, such as when a Facebook friend shares a false post without knowing that it is fake.

Disinformation, on the other hand, is defined as "false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth." This occurs when social media accounts knowingly disseminate falsehoods or misleading news to influence public discourse or policy.

Basically, misinformation is shared by mistake, and disinformation comes with a specific agenda. Both still contribute to the spread of false information online.

At the center of many Ukraine claims the Snopes team has seen are misleading videos and images, a type of content that promulgates dis- and misinformation. Such examples include authentic imagery shared without context or with misleading information, as well as false or fabricated footage posed as authentic.

One example was a video that claimed to show a Ukrainian tank crashing through a Russian barrier following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. After it was shared online, the video racked up millions of views on TikTok.

However, our analysis revealed that while the video mirrors current events, it was actually taken in May 2014 during the Battle of Mariupol shortly after Russia annexed Crimea. In short, the video was authentic but was shared without proper context.

Another example was a climate protest miscaptioned as war footage. In February, protestors in Austria organized a "die-in" in which participants enveloped themselves inside of body bags to "signify the catastrophic impact current climate policy could have on the world." Although the video was taken two weeks before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it was widely shared on social media by bad actors attempting to show that the conflict had been staged.

Recognizing the six "degrees of manipulation" described by the American Psychological Association — impersonation, conspiracy, emotion, polarization, discrediting, and trolling — can help social media users identify falsehoods in the wild. Our team has also analyzed video game clips portrayed as being authentic footage, straight-up photoshopped images, and movie scenes misrepresented as portraying crisis actors or warfare — all examples of content meant to evoke emotion, impersonate authentic people, or further polarize different ideological groups.

Determining whether a photo or video is authentic

Among the most common falsehoods fact-checkers see online are manipulated videos and photos. To determine whether an image is authentic employs a tool we call a "reverse image search." There are several such search engines online, some of the more popular being Google Images, TinEye, Yandex, and Bing Images.

My colleague Dan Evon compiled a how-to guide specifically dedicated to performing reverse image searches and points out that knowing when a photograph warrants extra examination is the first step. Does the content trigger a strong emotional response, push political agendas or biases, feature strong text or appear slightly off? If you answered yes to any of these things, chances are you'll want to do a reverse image search.

Each of the search engines listed above requires a similar process to perform a reverse image search.

  1. First, download the picture in question to your device.
  2. Next, upload that image to the search engine.
  3. Then, hit the search button for a list of results showing where online that image has been posted.
  4. Alternatively, most search engines can use the image URL.

Now, interpreting the results returned by the reverse image search can be a daunting task. As Evon wrote in his article, it is important to be wary of changing captions, the image source, and evolving versions of the image that differ from the original posted on the search engine. For more behind-the-scenes tricks, Snopes Tips: A Guide To Performing Reverse Image Searches.

How to identify a deepfake

Deepfakes, a portmanteau for deep learning and fake, is the 2022 version of photoshopping. These false videos use artificial intelligence to replace the likeness of one person with another in a video or other digital media, often portraying that person to be doing or saying something that never happened.

In the weeks since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a number of deepfakes have come across our news desk, some of which were intended to spread false — and sometimes dangerous — information to those directly involved in the conflict.

Snopes covered a poorly done deepfake of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asking civilians to lay down their arms to the Russian military, which was also broadcast on a Ukrainian news station after the outlet was reportedly hacked.

In this case, the fake footage was obvious: Zelenskyy's head in the deepfake was disproportionately small when compared to his neck.

As Evon notes, the best strategy to identify a deepfake is to look for its source. For example, several authentic videos of Zelenskyy show the president against the same background on his social media profiles and on the official social media pages of the Ukrainian government. This deepfake was never posted to these pages.

Another example that we saw in our newsroom was a video that claimed to show Russian President Vladimir Putin announcing the end of Russia's war with Ukraine. An authentic video posted by the Kremlin in late February was manipulated to make it appear as if fabricated audio was coming from the Russian president.

While Putin's movements in the two videos generally matched up, the edited version manipulated his mouth, a change that is most noticeable during portions of the video where the real Putin is silent, and the fake Putin is speaking. (The Twitter user who initially shared the video admitted in a follow-up tweet that it was fake.)

A side-by-side comparison of both the authentic and altered videos showed these subtle differences:

Can you spot a deepfake? Check out these videos that Snopes also debunked and learn more tools of the trade from our reporting team.

Fact-checking at home

The last several years have brought with them a contentious presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic, and now the Russia-Ukraine war — all life-altering events that have kept fact checkers around the world on their metaphorical toes. Along with the access to information that is granted by social media platforms comes a responsibility to users when it comes to consuming, reposting, and sharing information online. With the right training and a careful eye, social media users can help stop the spread of mis- and disinformation in the digital space.

As we always say: If in doubt, don't share it out.

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