This purported image of Donald Trump and a young girl on board a plane is fake and is not in any of the publicly released Epstein files.
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@shayan86bbc • 5.4k followers
Senior journalist at BBC Verify | disinformation, conspiracy theories, verification, open source investigations, extremism | shayan.sardarizadeh@bbc.c
This purported image of Donald Trump and a young girl on board a plane is fake and is not in any of the publicly released Epstein files.
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Dozens of high-engagement accounts on X, including some pro and anti-Trump profiles, have been accused of misleading users following the roll-out of a new transparency feature that shows user locations.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj38m11218xo
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We used eyewitness accounts from train passengers and stabbing victims alongside verified video and police statements to build a picture of the 20 minutes when the knife attack on board a train near Huntingdon unfolded.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgvqw8vnq7o
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Verified videos from Gaza show a public execution of eight men, armed members of Hamas's internal security force on patrol and masked fighters firing on unarmed men in displays of force by Hamas in Gaza since the US-brokered ceasefire began last week.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr034p5prlo
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A video of Macron, Merz and Starmer on a train to Kyiv has gone viral because users like Alex Jones and at least two senior Russian officials claim that the three leaders were caught on camera with a bag of coke and a spoon.
In reality, the alleged bag is just a tissue and the spoon is a cocktail pick.
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This image of Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump and Elon Musk was published by a number of major Italian news outlets after it went viral online this week.
But it's AI-generated and fake, with a number of inconsistencies typically seen in images created with AI.
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Many useful Community Notes on X cite as evidence articles researched and published by traditional fact-checking organisations around the world, the very same ones that it's now fashionable to call useless, biased and unreliable.
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The obvious story to follow up on after this announcement by Zuckerberg is what happens now to many non-partisan fact-checking organisations around the world that do good work in their respective regions and primarily rely on funding from Meta to survive.
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Two things can be true at once.
1. Meta has long had a real problem of excessive moderation and censorship, mostly caused by its own internal systems, not fact-checkers
2. Zuckerberg is ending third-party fact-checking now because it's the politically expedient thing to do for him and Meta
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Robert F Kennedy Jr has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US health secretary.
BBC Verify has examined some of RFK Jr's most controversial claims on vaccine safety, water fluoridation and Covid-19.
bbc.com/news/articles/c0mzk2y41zvo
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I'm deeply suspicious of the figures Threads touts for its active users and new sign ups.
The average rate of daily engagements on Threads does not correspond with the 275 million active users cited by Meta.
I wonder if they're inflating that figure by using some sort of trickery involving Instagram's massive user base.
Or perhaps it's all to do with Threads actively suppressing political content, which means there's huge activity and engagement in non-political content.
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Donald Trump has nominated Robert F Kennedy Jr for the role of health secretary.
Just three months ago, he told the #1 most community noted user on X about the chemtrails conspiracy theory: "We are going to stop this crime."
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The last thing the world needs right now is for X to turn into a right-wing echo chamber, and for platforms like Threads and Bluesky to become echo chambers for liberals.
Social media needs more diversity of thought, more differing political views and more open conversations by opposing sides, not less.
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Viral conspiracy theories by some liberal accounts, which claim Elon Musk's Starlink terminals were used to rig the election for Donald Trump, are among the wildest I've seen and on a par with right-wing claims Venezuela or Italy hacked voting machines to win the 2020 election for Biden.
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These two viral tweets, one by a conservative and the other by a liberal, are word for word the same.
However, one claims Arizona's election was rigged against the Republicans and the other claims Arizona's election was rigged against the Democrats.
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This fake CNN screenshot, which falsely claims to show Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump by six points in Texas and cites it as evidence of fraud, has been viewed millions of times.
CNN has confirmed that the image is completely fabricated and never aired on the network.
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A vast Russian disinformation operation has created over 300 fake videos impersonating more than 50 major news organisations this year.
Ahead of the US election, the operation is ramping up production in an attempt to sow division, claim the vote will be rigged and depict the US as a country near collapse.
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BBC Verify has found clear clues, including false addresses and a stock image, that indicate a viral video of Haitian men claiming to have voted “multiple times” using multiple IDs in Georgia is fake.
US intelligence agencies say "Russian influence actors" are behind it.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9vnyl2jnpjo
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You can post any Trump-bashing nonsense without a shred of evidence and some liberals will lap it up like crazy without question, case in point here.
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This NBC article from October 2023 perfectly demonstrates why journalists should be extremely careful in how they use the term conspiracy theory in news reports.
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A LinkedIn post, written by local man Eddie Murray, had an outsized effect in stirring up the false belief that the Southport attack suspect was a migrant.
Murray's false post was widely recirculated online and became a credible source for many ahead of the Southport riot.
bbc.com/news/articles/c99v90813j5o
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We now know why right-wing user "Black Insurrectionist" deactivated his X account last week.
@apnews tracked him down and found out not only is he white, he owes millions in taxes, is accused of defrauding business partners, and the FBI previously raided his home.
He published dubious emails alleging serious allegations against Tim Walz amd "ABC whistleblower" claims after the Trump-Harris debate.
apnews.com/article/black-trump-kamala-harris-tim-walz-aca31c66fe5bfef1e8827581e7919ece
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The office of Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant published this image last night, which claims to show him looking at the impact of Israeli strikes on Tehran.
But the image of an explosion on the screen is in fact from 2021, and shows a fire at an oil refinery in Tehran.
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I'm a BBC journalist and fact-checker.
You'll notice that Meta's utterly insane moderation system has blacklisted my post as misinformation, a post that has a giant, red "FALSE" label on it and fact-checks a viral, fake image of Kamala Harris.
And every time Meta does this, my account gets shadow-banned and suppressed.
The Meta moderation system is completely broken. Can you imagine how bad their enforcement regime must be for regular users?
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