Almost 100,000 people were watching a fake Facebook Live of a tornado GIF
Facebook Live was conceived to put viewers in the middle of a scene.
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But what happens when that scene is fake? A Facebook page called “Newsfeed” took a heavily manipulated weather GIF, turned it into a video, added a standard thundering storm sound loop, and streamed it live for four hours.
Image: newsfeed/facebook/screengrab
Guess what? It went absolutely nuts.
At one point, more than 90,000 people were watching it at the same time. The video got more than 14 million views, 360,000 shares, 256,000 comments, and 900,000 reactions.
Naturally, people pointed out in the comments and on Twitter that the video was fake, but that didn't stop users from watching and sharing it:
93,000 people currently watching this fake Facebook Live of a heavily edited GIF https://t.co/58KHiu6NGP pic.twitter.com/iuJiJDcx2m
— Matt Navarra ⭐️ (@MattNavarra) July 20, 2017
A heavily manipulated weather GIF was looped and turned into a Facebook Live video and it's got 300K shares. https://t.co/SK1w95bqK2 pic.twitter.com/DB5VXYCuYs
— Brian J. Manzullo (@BrianManzullo) July 20, 2017
The original GIF was posted on the @earthescope Twitter account on July 17 with the description "Majestic South Dakota tornadic supercell caught on camera by Marko Korosec."
The photographer acknowledged the picture's incredible success with an Instagram post, saying the shot was taken on June 19, 2015, and produced by his friend @jonathanwennstroem:
A post shared by Marko Korosec (@markokorosecnet) on Jul 20, 2017 at 7:31am PDT
"Newsfeed" was not alone in posting the fake livestreaming. On July 15, UNILAD Tech posted a similar animation of the storm which gathered "only" 700,000 views:
So the question now is: Amid all the uproar about fake news, what is Facebook doing to crack down on these kind of hoaxes?
The company is currently tacking the issue with algorithm tweaks and AI to downrate or even block such posts, but clearly there's still work to be done, according to Matt Navarra, director of social media for TheNextWeb.
"Yet again, Facebook shows just how vulnerable it is to spammy fake ‘Live’ videos," he told Mashable.
"It’s no surprising the growth hack tactic worked given the captivating footage used… and how Facebook continues to boost the reach of live video in News Feed."
"The problem is there's still money to be made by pumping out this stuff to scrape up tons of new Page Likes. These spammy Pages can then get sold on for hundred or thousands of dollars."
"One thing this post does underline is (original) content may NOT be king on Facebook… for now," Navarra concluded.
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