Anyone
who has ever asked me for tips on content verification and debunking of
fakes knows one of the first things I always mention is reverse image
search. It’s one of the simplest and most powerful tools at your
disposal. This week provided another good example of how overlooked it
is.
Unrest
in Baltimore, like any other dramatic event these days, created a surge
of activity on social media. In the age of the selfie and ubiquitous
cameras, many people have become compulsive chroniclers of all their
activities — sometimes unwisely so.
Reactions
ranged from shock and disgust to disbelief and amusement when a series
of images started to circulate showing looters proudly displaying their
ill-gotten gains. Not all, however, was as it seemed.
Few things say America like KFC, and it was no surprise to see that the Colonel had fallen victim to the violence:
I
often get asked about the fundamentals of verification, and one of the
first things I alway mention is the ability — and indeed the reflex — to
always perform a reverse image search. I also mention, only
half-jokingly, that this should possibly even be added to the school
curriculum. It’s not as if it would take up much of the school year; it
can be taught in approximately 30 seconds.
This photo and the accompanying declaration were admittedly worrying:
But the young man shown had already been the subject of an April 17 news report from Fox13, a Memphis-based Fox affiliate.
Given
the provenance of the images, it should come as no surprise that the
profile photographs used on the Twitter accounts are not exactly 100
percent legitimate. The gentleman named as Da’Marious Trufton connected
to the KFC photo turns out to be Dupree Johnson, from South Florida.
‘Tanisha’, who appeared to have looted an entire cosmetics counter, was represented by a photograph of a Canadian rapper, Honey Cocaine.
The
profile photograph of ‘Jayrome’, who was preparing to take his
heat-packing kid brother on a crime spree, actually showed a young man
who goes by the name of “VonMar”:
VonMar appears to be a Chicago-based Jackass wannabe who has a taste for mischief but not, as far as we know, looting.
There are numerous other examples, but you get the picture.
We
could speculate all day on the motivations of the people who posted
these tweets, from the sinister to the silly. One thing for certain is
that they were getting dozens of favourites and retweets, and there was
no shortage of people taking them seriously.
Some notified law enforcement officials…
… others were disappointed…
… and still others grabbed the opportunity to display the worst side of their own nature:
The
‘confessions’ were shared widely, being retweeted by plenty of people,
half a dozen of them by a blogger with more than 23,000 followers:
I approached the blogger ahead of writing this article and, after a bit of back and forth, received some counsel:
The
point, of course, is not whether these things happened or not. The
point is that the tweets were not portraying what they purported to be.
Worse, they used photos of real people and connected them to these acts.
Tineye
and Google image search provide browser add-ons, meaning these kinds of
checks can be performed in seconds. Cultivate the habit — increased
credibility is only a right-click away.
Also like… you know what? Considering how many random unarmed black people we kill every year for no reason? That looting would better be described as “forcing compensation even if it is cruelly meager for the damages done to communities, families and individual lives”
Fuckin’ loot away, we owe black people a helluva a lot more than a bunch of nivea and aspirin, but please do be safe out there.
Madeira Darling is a snarky mystic, devout Satanist, serious Marxist, laughing dominatrix, and writer from San Fransisco where they live with their boyfriend in a house full of altars to their various demons.
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