Major news events such as Hurricane Harvey produce thousands of photos, and thousands more tweets and Facebook posts of fake, outdated or out-of-context photos. This time the big winner is a photoshop of a shark on the freeway which pops up during every major hurricane.
Photoshop by basscat dad
Before you join the 68,000+ people who retweeted that fake photo, just spend two clicks fact-checking it. Right-click the image, then click “Search Google for Image”. And boom, you see if there’s a source or 10 blog posts debunking it. BuzzFeed reporter Jane Lytvynenko breaks it down into baby steps:
Before retweeting a viral image:
right click ➡️ search google for image pic.twitter.com/dYq9BQm3mc
— Jane Lytvynenko (@JaneLytv) August 28, 2017
And here’s the slightly longer process on mobile:
It’s inconvenient, but there is.
Install Chrome ➡️ open tweet in Chrome ➡️ tap to isolate image ➡️ press and hold on image ➡️ click search pic.twitter.com/AJBJbaV3q9
— Jane Lytvynenko (@JaneLytv) August 28, 2017
It’s a pain, but if you don’t do this, you’ll have to admit you’re more interested in attention than you are in the truth. And when all your followers see you fall for a hoax, they will unfollow you for being a dummy.
But you’re not a dummy and you’re not attention-starved, so you’ll fact-check before you retweet, and no fake image will ever go viral again!
Meanwhile, follow the Washington Post‘s running list of Hurricane Harvey hoaxes.
Comments
One response to “Fact-Check That Viral Image In Two Clicks”
I like that you’re getting people to do this but why doesnt it work?
Right click doesnt show the google image search as you say
*Search Google for Image is a Google Chrome feature. It doesn’t not work on any other web browsers. It also does not work on every image on a web page.