Everyday fakes: old photos, cut videos, fake quotes, satire

Series: How minds are moved · Fake news, fact-checks and how to check for yourself · 4 of 7

On 7 November, the president of Italy’s Democratic Party posted a picture of Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wearing a red MAGA cap, with the caption “Mai stati trumpiani” (“never been Trumpians”). The picture was made with AI. He took it down within hours and called it an “ironic meme”. By then LSN News, my news engine, had 46 articles from 22 independent voices about it. Most fakes you will meet are like this one: not a grand operation, just one picture, one clip or one quote, shared by someone who wanted it to be true.

Contents · 7 sections

TL;DR #

• Most everyday fakes come in five shapes: a real photo from another time or place, a cut or slowed video, an invented or twisted quote, satire taken as news, and AI-made images or voices.
• They come from every direction: party politicians, state media and official accounts in Moscow, Kyiv, Beijing and Tehran, a public broadcaster in London, pranksters and scammers.
• Each shape has a quick test that takes a minute or two.
• The tell is almost never the picture itself. It is the missing context: when, where, who first, and what came before and after.

Five shapes of the everyday fake #

For each shape: documented cases from different directions, and the quick test.

1. The real photo from the wrong place or time #

This is the oldest and cheapest trick. You only change the caption.

One photo of a shark swimming down a flooded highway has “appeared” during Hurricane Irene in 2011, Harvey in 2017, Ian in 2022 and many storms in between, according to Snopes, Misbar and others. It is a composite: a shark from an older photo pasted into a flooded street. A Fox News host repeated it on air in 2017, and a US senator shared it in 2023.

War footage works the same way, and so do video games. The Czech studio behind the military game Arma 3 has published statements since 2022 asking people to stop passing off its gameplay as real combat. Clips from it were shared as Russian–Ukrainian battles and, in October 2023, as Hamas shooting down Israeli helicopters, and fact-checkers such as AAP and Lead Stories traced them back to the game.

On 10 November 2026, Al Jazeera’s open-source unit examined a video shared as “bodies of Syrian fighters returning from Yemen”, at a moment when reports about Syrian troops and Yemen were all over the news. A short phrase visible in the footage named a funeral-washing service at a mosque in Mecca. Keyframes led to an earlier post of the same scenes: the transfer of 14 deceased people to the Grand Mosque for funeral prayers. Nothing to do with Syria or Yemen.

The quick test: run a reverse image search (or a few frames of the video) and look for the oldest copy. Read every word visible in the frame: shop signs, banners, licence plates, language. One word can place the image.

2. The cut, spliced or slowed video #

Video feels like proof because you “saw it yourself”. But what you saw was chosen.

In May 2019 a clip of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was slowed to about 75 percent of normal speed, with the pitch adjusted so she sounded drunk, according to analyses reported by The Washington Post and AFP. It had more than a million views when the Post reported on it. YouTube removed it. Facebook’s fact-checkers rated it false, and Facebook kept it up with reduced reach.

The same trick, with more professional tools, was used by a public broadcaster. In November 2025 the BBC’s director-general and the head of BBC News resigned after it emerged that a Panorama documentary had joined two parts of Donald Trump’s speech of 6 January 2021, spoken more than 50 minutes apart, into what sounded like one sentence. The BBC chair apologised for an “error of judgment” and accepted that the edit gave the impression of a direct call for violent action.

One target was a Democrat, the other a Republican. The technique was the same: remove the time between the words.

The quick test: find the full, unedited recording. Speeches, hearings and press conferences are almost always online in full. Ask what comes just before and just after the clip, and whether the voice sounds natural.

3. The invented quote, and the real quote twisted #

A quote in a nice font with a photo next to it looks like a record. It isn’t.

Since 2015 a meme has claimed that Donald Trump told People magazine in 1998 that Republicans are “the dumbest group of voters in the country”. People’s own staff searched their archive and found no such interview, according to FactCheck.org, and Snopes, PolitiFact and Full Fact all rated it fabricated. It still comes back every election.

The twisted quote is harder to spot, because part of it is real. In 2023 posts claimed Greta Thunberg had predicted the end of humanity by June 2023. She did tweet in 2018, quoting an article, that climate change would “wipe out all humanity” unless fossil fuels were stopped “over the next five years”. The tweet was real and later deleted. But the five years were a deadline for action, not a date for the end of the world, and the scientist the article cited later said he never made the claim. PolitiFact rated the viral version false, Full Fact rated it “missing context”.

The quick test: search the exact words in quotation marks, plus the claimed source. A real quote has a findable origin: a date, an interview, a recording. “He said it somewhere” is not an origin.

4. Satire taken as news #

Satire is honest about being a joke, on its own site. Off its site, it becomes a claim.

In September 2012 Iran’s Fars news agency ran The Onion’s joke “poll” saying that rural white Americans preferred Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Barack Obama as real news, with The Onion’s name removed. Gallup confirmed no such poll existed and Fars apologised. Two months later China’s People’s Daily website ran The Onion’s “sexiest man alive” joke about Kim Jong Un, with a gallery of 55 photos. Both were state media, and both were fooled by a joke. It happens to ordinary readers every week, on every side.

The quick test: check the site’s “about” page or its name with the word “satire”. If a story is perfect for one side, ask whether it was written to be funny.

5. The staged account and the synthetic face #

Some fakes are made from scratch. In July 2014 Russia’s Channel One aired a woman who described Ukrainian soldiers crucifying a three-year-old boy in Sloviansk. Reporters who went to the town found no one who had seen or heard of it, and in December 2014 the channel’s own presenter conceded it had no evidence for the story. On the Ukrainian side, the “Ghost of Kyiv”, a pilot said to have shot down Russian jets, was amplified in 2022 by official accounts, including the Defence Ministry’s, with a clip that turned out to come from a flight-simulator game. In April 2022, Ukraine’s Air Force Command called the Ghost a “superhero legend”.

Then there is the AI fake, which is where the Tajani picture belongs. Italy had seen it before: the LSN News story recalls a deepfake of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and an altered photo of the trade unionist Susanna Camusso. On 7 November, Meloni condemned “the circulation of false images, spread also by members of the opposition”. There is a commercial version too. In July 2023 a deepfake video of the British consumer champion Martin Lewis appeared in a Facebook ad, recommending a fake “Elon Musk” investment. Lewis called it the first deepfake scam advert he had seen.

The quick test: look for the account that published first, not the one that shared it. Then check whether any outlet that was physically there confirms it. For AI images: hands, text, ears and backgrounds still often go wrong, but don’t rely on that. Rely on the source.

What it feels like from the inside #

Everyday fakes don’t feel like propaganda. They feel like recognition: “I knew it.” The shark fits a scary storm. The slurred speech fits what you already thought about a politician. The MAGA cap fits what you already thought about a rival party. The fake works because it confirms something, not because it convinces you of something new.

That is also why smart, careful people share them. A senator, a TV host, a party president and two state media outlets are all in this post. Being fooled is not about intelligence. It is about speed and wanting something to be true.

What fakes can and cannot do #

Most single fakes are caught, and caught fast: the Tajani picture lasted hours, the Pelosi clip days.

But being caught doesn’t cancel them. The shark has been debunked for 15 years and still turns up with every hurricane. A fake shapes a mood even when it is corrected, and the people who saw the fake are rarely the same people who see the correction. That gap is the subject of the last post in this series.

How to notice it #

• It fits your side, or your fear, a little too perfectly.
• There is no date, no place and no original source, only “going viral”.
• A video is short and starts or ends in the middle of a sentence.
• A quote has no interview, date or recording behind it.
• The site’s name or “about” page is unfamiliar, or says satire.
• The image has text you can’t read, or a sign in an unexpected language.
• Only one account, or one network of sites, is carrying it. On LSN News, a story with many outlets and few independent voices is worth a second look.

Frequently asked questions #

What is the most common kind of fake photo? #

A real photo with a false caption: right picture, wrong time or place. It needs no editing skill, which is why it is the most common. A reverse image search that finds an older copy usually settles it.

How can I tell if a video has been edited? #

Find the full original recording and compare. Watch for cuts in the middle of sentences, sudden jumps in background or lighting, and voices that sound slow or unnaturally pitched. Official speeches and hearings are almost always published in full.

Is satire fake news? #

Not on its own site, where it is clearly labelled as a joke. It becomes misinformation when it is copied without the label and shared as fact, which has fooled state news agencies as well as ordinary readers.

Are fakes only spread by one political side? #

No. The documented cases in this post come from a centre-left Italian politician, the anonymous makers of the Pelosi clip, a public broadcaster, Russian and Ukrainian official channels, Chinese and Iranian state media, pranksters and scammers.

The lesson #

An everyday fake is usually true material placed in a false context: a real shark, a real speech, a real tweet, real funeral footage, a real face. So the question that catches most of them is not “is this real?” but “is this what it says it is?” When, where, who first, and what came just before and after. Ask that before you share, and most fakes stop with you.