In this article, you will find a detailed guide on video verification. It covers advanced methods and tools for authenticating digital video content that are indispensable for journalists, researchers and fact-checkers.
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A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Content Verification. Learn how to spot and check misinformation online with simple, affordable tools.
How to find out whether the posts, articles and statements that we see on the Internet and in social networks are true?
We study and investigate misinformation in many forms. Even the most logical intellectuals can be persuaded by statements that have nothing to do with reality. In the worst cases, it can have dire consequences.
For example, on the QAnoncasualties subreddit, users share sad stories about loved ones consumed by the QAnon conspiracy theory. But QAnon isn’t the only one sending people down the rabbit hole of misinformation.
In recent months, there have been protests around the world against vaccination and quarantine restrictions related to Covid-19. More often than not, the protesters were inspired by false and misleading claims from social media. Disinformation has been used, for example, against the Black Lives Matter movement, the introduction of 5G technologies, and even about such tragic events as the Beirut port explosion in 2020.
Researchers are often approached by people who want to know if the stories they read on the Internet are true. Learning the basics of verification can help with these issues.
In this guide, we will try to explain how to be vigilant when working with videos and photos from the Internet and identify those that contain false, misleading or miscontextualized information.
Verification is not necessarily difficult. It does not require complex algorithms or access to advanced tools or programs that automatically determine whether a photo is fake or manipulated.
Generally, to find out if the content is authentic, a critical approach and careful examination of the context of the image or post combined with simple tools such as Google search or other reverse image search platforms is sufficient.
This guide covers some of the first steps in identifying disinformation, but it is far from comprehensive.
When studying the content published on the Internet, it is worth knowing several basic principles of fact-checking, which you can rely on.
In most cases, during widely publicized events, various photos and videos appear on the network. Among them, it is likely that there will be false ones, repetitions and sometimes even obvious fakes. Therefore, it is important to check the content for originality. For example, has this photo not been used before? Reverse image search platforms, which we will talk about later, are very easy to use and make it easy to find where a certain image has been found on the web before.
Pay attention to the source of the photo or video, the platform on which it was published, and think: does this affect the credibility of the content? Were they on a site with low moderation standards? Is the author of the post anonymous or does it look like a real person? Has he written about conspiracy theories before? What do they write in response to a post? Is there no other view of the situation in the comments?
This is a very broad topic and an important element of the work. If it is possible to prove that the event recorded on the video did not take place where it is claimed, it is likely that the information will be false.
Having established the location of the shooting, you can perform chronolocation, that is, determine the time of a certain event. If it is possible to prove that the video or photo was taken much earlier or later than stated in the post, then it is likely to conclude that the statements in the post are false.
Users post content on social media for a variety of reasons. Some do so sincerely, but others may be trying to advance a political platform or personal point of view. That is why it is so important to understand the motivation of the posts. For example, if a post is published by someone who often publishes misinformation, supports conspiracy theories, or has an extremely biased point of view, you should approach their content with caution and check it more thoroughly.
Armed with these basic principles, let’s see how the simplest verification can be done in practice.
On March 23, 2021, the container ship Ever Given was caught in a sandstorm while passing through the Suez Canal. The ship ran aground, blocking the most important water artery and attracting the attention of the world’s media. Soon, online misinformation spread around the incident.
The video, which showed a container that some users suggested was used for child trafficking, drew particular attention.
This video was posted on various Telegram channels frequented by followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
The post received 124,000 views on one Telegram channel alone, even though there was no evidence that the container was used for human trafficking — or that it was even on board the Ever Given.
By taking a closer look at the video, you can understand more about its source and deal with the false statement that accompanies it.
Let’s start with the fact that the video has the TikTok logo and username. This profile (which we do not name or link to so as not to draw unnecessary attention to it) belongs to a user who posts various videos on his profile. To find his videos, just search for his username in the app or on the TikTok website and explore his posts.
Many of this particular user’s posts include videos and footage of heavy equipment, and are regularly tagged with the hashtag #undergroundmining.
This account is apparently not spreading conspiracy theories, but rather intended for those interested in mining machinery and equipment.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the video from this account was used in Telegram in order to mislead readers.
Other clues can be found in the content of the video itself. In this video, a person approaches the container and opens it. Chairs and other objects are visible inside. The door says “MineARC” and has a matching logo. The words “refuge chamber” and “mineSAFE” are also visible.
We can do a simple Google search for those words and see the results.
As you can see in the screenshot below, the results lead to the site of MineARC Systems, a company that makes mine emergency shelters.
You can study the company’s website and then compare the video with its products.
It quickly becomes clear that MineARC makes cameras that appear to match the container in the TikTok video — some of the items look identical to what can be seen in the product photos on MineARC’s website.
So, with a simple Google and TikTok search, we found:
original video source;
the real purpose of the video camera;
the name and website of the company that manufactures these cameras;
that this container is actually a shelter chamber used in mines.
All this allows us to confidently say that there is no evidence that this video is in any way related to child trafficking. Also, there is no evidence that the video was filmed aboard the Ever Given. On the contrary, all things considered, the video was taken from a page dedicated to mining equipment, which has nothing to do with either child trafficking or Ever Given.
Unfortunately, we cannot control how the content we publish is used by conspiracy theorists and other unscrupulous actors. Therefore, it is important not to lose vigilance when viewing content on social networks.
This short video, posted on a Telegram channel with 60,000 subscribers on April 7, 2021, shows French police officers throwing their handcuffs to the ground. The text on the video claims that they are doing this as a sign of protest against the coronavirus lockdowns.
Such statements can be very significant, especially for conspiracy theorists who deny the origin and very existence of Covid-19, as well as for activists who oppose lockdowns.
But how do we go about verifying this video, its claims, and its real context?
As in the Ever Given example, we see the TikTok logo and username.
This account also has other content against Covid-19 protection measures, such as wearing masks. The account also doesn’t cite the source of the video, which raises doubts about whether it actually shows what the uploader claims it does.
However, with the most obvious keywords, such as “French police throwing handcuffs”, you can start looking for the original and other videos of the same event on search engines and social networks.
Fortunately, these simple search keywords give us different results on YouTube.
The results do not include the exact video that was posted on Telegram, but there are several other videos of French policemen throwing handcuffs on the ground.
After clicking on these videos and watching them, you quickly realize that these protests have nothing to do with Covid-19. They are related to the ban on suffocation, which was adopted after the murder of George Floyd, as well as the speech of French police officers against accusations of brutality and racism.
Additionally, we can see that many of these videos were uploaded to YouTube on June 14, 2020 (about 9 months before the Telegram post was published).
A Google search for the same keywords as on YouTube brings up a BBC article published two days before these videos were uploaded to YouTube.
At the same time, there are no media reports or any other evidence of “anti-cop-like” protests by the French police, during which police officers threw handcuffs on the ground, which would also coincide in time with the Telegram post (April 2021).
In contrast, there is a Reuters fact-check published shortly after the September 2020 protests that says the handcuffed performance has nothing to do with Covid-19 measures.
Although this fact-check was conducted several months before, apparently one Telegram user decided to repost the video of these police protests, hoping that no one would notice the already published revelations.
However, a few simple techniques allowed us to get full information about this story.
This verification required only the basics of critical thinking and a simple keyword search.
We investigated the source of the video and then used social media and traditional media to verify whether the claims associated with the video were true.
Now, when a lot of content related to the pandemic appears on alternative social platforms, it is important to understand that a significant part of it can be easily and quickly refuted.
Take, for example, a misleading post that we first explored early in the coronavirus pandemic. A video then went viral on TikTok, reportedly showing huge lines during the panic at an Aldi store in Haarlem, the Netherlands.
By taking a screenshot of this video and uploading it to Bing images (you should also try reverse image search services Yandex, Google Images and TinEye), you can quickly find out that it was actually not filmed in the Netherlands at all.
This simple technique also allows you to confirm that the event on the video actually happened before the start of the pandemic. Here’s how to do it.
After uploading still to Bing, we can realize that the platform will be determined as bearing a resemblance to our screen grab on the right side.
Among the results, the one called ALDI Sonderverkauf in Kiel is particularly interesting. It translates from German as “Aldi special sale in Kiel” – a city in the north of Germany. Clicking on this video will reveal that it was first uploaded to YouTube in 2011, long before Covid-19.
This simple method allowed us to prove that this TikTok video is not what it is being made out to be.
The deception reveals another important detail. The “FBI” sign in the upper right corner of the picture belongs to a German chain of hair salons, which can be found out by a simple Google search. This and other small details allow us to pinpoint the exact location of the video using a technique known as geolocation. But what if the picture has been changed?
In May 2020, this picture of George Floyd’s killer, Derek Chauvin, went viral on Telegram.
Some have used the footage to argue that Chauvin is innocent because the ears in his post-arrest photo appear to be different from the video taken at the scene of George Floyd’s murder.
Although experts say that a person’s identity can be established with high accuracy even from a blurry frame of his image, in this case there are small details that raise serious questions.
For example, it can be seen (in the image below and in the upper right of the collage above) that Chauvin’s arm patch with the word “Minneapolis” is displayed.
In the original video of the incident, the patch looks correct.
Just look at the original video that went viral to find the spot that was shown (after 8:57 here and in the screenshot below).
Note the stop seen behind Chauvin in both shots. This tells us that the screenshot was taken at this exact moment. As you can see, Chauvin was looking in the direction opposite to that in the mirrored frame.
We can now be sure that Chauvin’s right ear is visible in the reflected frame, and the left in the post-arrest photo. In addition, the quality of the reflected frame is significantly lower than the photo after the arrest. Even if the ear were the same, it would be difficult to compare with the naked eye.
At the very least, the mere fact that the image has been manipulated should indicate that the statement accompanying it should be approached with extreme caution, and that it is extremely unlikely that it will turn out to be true.
For other examples of video or image manipulation that went viral and were later debunked, see here, here and here.
That said, it’s important to note that image manipulation is far less common than old images posted out of context or deliberately missigned to mislead.
Although there are tools that allow you to detect the presence of image manipulation, these tools are often cumbersome and difficult to use. The most effective way to find context for pictures we see online is to use common sense and some of the easiest methods described in this article.
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