On March 1-3, Georgian-language Facebook users (1,2,3) shared a video of people dancing in a club. The authors claim that the video depicts French President Emmanuel Macron. The video was also published on a Russian-language website on February 27.
The video allegedly depicting the French president is altered. In fact, Emmanuel Macron’s face is manually inserted into the video.
The video, which, according to the authors, depicts the French president, has been altered. As we can see in the video, Macron is dancing in a club, although he is wearing different clothes. In fact, the faces of people dancing in the video have been replaced with that of Macron.
The frames used in the video can be found on social networks at different times. For example, in one shot, Macron’s face is inserted instead of the face of a woman wearing a green dress. According to Yandex image search, the video of the woman dancing has been published many times on various platforms in the past.
Reverse image search was also found for an Instagram post dated January 5, 2021 showing a person in a white shirt, whose footage is used in the fake version.
In addition, another video available on YouTube demonstrates that the majority of the footage was taken at the Stratus club in San Diego in 1986-1987.
Most of the shots used in the video production are taken from the video taken in the mentioned club in the 80s.
The fact-checking organization Snopes also verified the information that the disseminated footage shows Emmanuel Macron. According to their information, in addition to the fact that the footage is created by artificial intelligence, Emmanuel Macron was 10 years old in 1987.
About the Source
The Facebook account of Nats Nobi, also known as “Fantina”, together with her other accounts (1,2,3) constantly publishes posts with false information and conspiracies. “Myth Detector” verified the false information spread by the user many times in the past (1,2).
“Myth Detector” has also debunked the false information spread by Facebook user Aleqsandre Mgeladze in the past (1,2).
Facebook user Koba Kusiani also regularly spreads false and misleading information (1,2).
The article has been written in the framework of Facebook’s fact-checking program. You can read more about the restrictions that Facebook may impose based on this article via this link. You can find information about appealing or editing our assessment via this link.
Read detailed instructions for editing the article.
Read detailed appeal instructions.
