What to believe

[Karma1981]

Was just pondering after seeing a few posts on social media on pictures that people believe to be from different times.
Like the one about the lady with bandages on her head and blood picture that people are saying was from 2018s gas blast in Ukraine and not now (just an example).
How do you find out what is fake and what is real?

It is really difficult to know what to believe, the BBC has been trying to do some sorting out of fake news.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/60513452
www.bbc.co.uk/news/60528276
But even BBC stuff will be subject to bias because they are on the side of the west.

Exercise a bit of common. If the image shows trees in full leaf, they're not from this week. Follow the source back - does it check out? Trusted source mkay, random nobody on Twitter, think again. We used to call this critical thinking.

@FlibbertyGiblets

Exercise a bit of common. If the image shows trees in full leaf, they're not from this week. Follow the source back - does it check out? Trusted source mkay, random nobody on Twitter, think again. We used to call this critical thinking.

I have done that, but on some it is still really hard to prove if there fake or real. And if I put info up I do my best to make sure the info I have is fact to the best of my abilities. I have people that are very well educated that put up imo a lot of misinformation.

@FlibbertyGiblets
How do you apply critical thinking for the example OP described in her post?

An obvious thing to try with images is to run an image search on Google. Right click on the image and click on "Copy image link" then go to Google, click on images (top right of the screen), click on the camera icon, paste the image URL and click "Search by image". You can then use the search tools to set up a custom date range. In the case of the image mentioned, you will find that Google doesn't throw up any instances of the image prior to 31st December 2021. So no, it isn't from a gas blast a few years ago.

Another simple rule of thumb is that those claiming the mainstream media are pushing fake news are generally the real purveyors of fake news. They are either those who knowingly push fake news for their own purposes or those who have been taken in by them. You will, for example, find a large overlap between those making false claims about the war in Ukraine and those claiming that Trump won the presidential election in 2020.

@prh47bridge

An obvious thing to try with images is to run an image search on Google. Right click on the image and click on "Copy image link" then go to Google, click on images (top right of the screen), click on the camera icon, paste the image URL and click "Search by image". You can then use the search tools to set up a custom date range. In the case of the image mentioned, you will find that Google doesn't throw up any instances of the image prior to 31st December 2021. So no, it isn't from a gas blast a few years ago.

Another simple rule of thumb is that those claiming the mainstream media are pushing fake news are generally the real purveyors of fake news. They are either those who knowingly push fake news for their own purposes or those who have been taken in by them. You will, for example, find a large overlap between those making false claims about the war in Ukraine and those claiming that Trump won the presidential election in 2020.

I will do that in future, wtf is wrong with people to fake this or to make out the ukraine crisis isn't even happening. People are not even allowed to have a shopping bag in ukraine because the people who are saying it's fake are using pictures of them with bags as evidence that there is no problem there.

I don't think you can be so confident phr47, none of us can possibly know the truth about what's happening in Ukraine or indeed polling stations in the US unless we were there personally.
Really what you are saying is I trust my media.
We all do it, but we should all take it with a bucket of salt. It's naive to think only the Bad Guys use propaganda, manipulation, sleights of hand, and distortion.

@1Week

I don't think you can be so confident phr47, none of us can possibly know the truth about what's happening in Ukraine or indeed polling stations in the US unless we were there personally. Really what you are saying is I trust my media. We all do it, but we should all take it with a bucket of salt. It's naive to think only the Bad Guys use propaganda, manipulation, sleights of hand, and distortion.

We can't be 100% confident of anything, but it is unlikely that Google image searches are being manipulated. As for the mainstream media, yes, they sometimes get things wrong and, of course, all outlets have some political bias. But the mainstream media is, on the whole, far more reliable than those who talk about "fake news". And, of course, with the internet we can check our mainstream media against media in other countries.

I follow this guy on Twitter - his job for the BBC is constant fact-checking.
twitter.com/Shayan86

For what it's worth, I believe that photo of the woman with bandages on her face from the first day of the war IS indeed from this conflict, and genuine.

www.snopes.com