Fake News: Fact & Fiction - Episode 7: Can you trust online images?

44,314 views ・ 2023-10-24

BBC Learning English


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:05
Hello I'm Hugo.
0
5339
831
00:06
And I'm Sam.
1
6250
1100
00:07
And this is Fake News: Fact & Fiction from BBC Learning English.
2
7799
3270
00:11
In the programme today we're talking about images and we meet viral image debunker Paulo Ordoveza.
3
11470
6559
00:18
Things that you need to look out for when you're looking at a viral image,
4
18109
3791
00:21
you want to look for any signs of manipulation, tell tales that it's been edited.
5
21980
6009
00:28
Before we get to that though, Sam. I'm looking forward to your vocabulary section.
6
28559
3780
00:32
What are you going to be telling us about today?
7
32419
2380
00:34
Today Hugo I am talking about the world of deceit and the words 'con', 'scam', 'phishing' and 'hoax'.
8
34879
9971
00:49
There have always been people who want to take our money
9
49049
3660
00:53
and the Internet and social media have provided criminals with different opportunities to try and con us.
10
53039
8020
01:01
The verb 'to con' means to deceive, to trick or to cheat and the noun 'a con' describes the method of tricking.
11
61219
10271
01:11
For example, on social media you sometimes see competitions with fantastic prizes
12
71969
5311
01:17
like a car or a boat and all you have to do is like the post and share it to have a chance of winning.
13
77359
8861
01:26
Many of these competitions are cons.
14
86549
2740
01:29
They're not real and are designed to get us to share personal information
15
89909
4860
01:35
which many people will do because they want to win the prize but no one ever wins
16
95129
5460
01:40
and the people who run the con have collected lots of personal data.
17
100950
6069
01:47
The word 'con' dates back to the mid to late 19th century and is a shortened version of 'confidence man',
18
107129
8371
01:56
which was the term for a person who was able to persuade people to give him money in return for
19
116250
5370
02:01
a service that was never given and was not what was promised.
20
121700
4980
02:06
This was known as a 'confidence trick', or a 'con trick'. And now just 'a con'.
21
126760
7429
02:15
A similar word for a 'con' is a 'scam'.
22
135599
2720
02:19
Scam is a much newer word though, from the late 1960s and in most cases it can be used in the same way as a con.
23
139090
8330
02:27
Those online competitions are often scams so be careful and beware of 'scammers'.
24
147500
6820
02:34
The people who are trying to trick you.
25
154400
2319
02:36
A good piece of advice is: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
26
156960
5489
02:44
A very modern type of scam is 'phishing'.
27
164189
3801
02:48
The term was coined in the 1990s and is a variation of the word 'fishing'.
28
168070
6100
02:54
The scammers are fishing for your personal details.
29
174300
3649
02:58
This is often done through emails which try to get you to log on to a web site that looks like your bank's
30
178030
5989
03:04
but is actually a fake site from which the phishers collect your log-in details.
31
184379
7051
03:11
Another type of scam that has been around for centuries but is also popular on the Internet are 'hoaxes'.
32
191510
7839
03:19
A hoax is something that has been created to trick you into believing something that isn't true.
33
199430
7239
03:26
This could be a fake news story but hoaxes are also common with photos and videos.
34
206750
6030
03:32
Take this one as an example.
35
212860
2869
03:35
If someone claims with authority that it's proof of the existence of the creature known as Bigfoot,
36
215849
6151
03:42
it's a hoax because it's just a person in a hairy costume.
37
222449
5111
03:52
Thanks Sam, and that leads us on nicely to today's topic about images.
38
232319
4260
03:56
Yes. So there's an old saying that the camera doesn't lie. But I'm not so sure we believe that any more.
39
236659
8000
04:04
Well the camera can only record what it sees. So in that case it can't lie.
40
244960
4250
04:09
But what we are told we're seeing in the image is not necessarily what the image actually is.
41
249599
6000
04:15
Yes so the camera doesn't lie. But people do.
42
255680
2589
04:18
Yeah. Well that's a good way to put it. And of course with the digital tools at our fingertips today
43
258509
5551
04:24
we can change, manipulate, or even create a completely digital image that looks like a real photograph.
44
264360
7360
04:31
Yeah. But now we're not talking about just putting a nice filter on our social media selfies, are we?
45
271910
6029
04:38
No. There are a few different ways images are used to tell a different story to the one that was photographed.
46
278279
7821
04:46
One thing we see a lot is real images. They're not fake or photoshopped but
47
286180
4849
04:51
they are from a different time or place than the caption states.
48
291109
3440
04:54
So the caption on an image can also be misleading in the way it describes what
49
294680
5229
04:59
is happening in the photo particularly if it generates strong emotion.
50
299989
6721
05:06
Yeah well here's an example.
51
306790
1219
05:08
Look at this picture and It might make you feel completely different emotions depending on how it's described.
52
308089
6120
05:14
"Amazing. I saw the police helping an injured protester!"
53
314289
3111
05:17
"Terrible. I saw the police attacking an innocent protester!"
54
317899
3851
05:22
So what do you think Sam. Do you think the different captions tell a different story?
55
322410
3479
05:26
Definitely yes. Those two captions elicit two completely different emotions but which one is right?
56
326189
7440
05:33
Without a wider context, we wouldn't know which one was correct.
57
333990
5070
05:39
So that's not the only way images can be misleading.
58
339139
3300
05:42
It's not just captions. Images can be cropped, manipulated and edited
59
342519
6601
05:49
to add things that were never there or take away things that were there.
60
349620
7560
05:58
In fact it's so easy to do this now that an aged relative of mine, who shall remain nameless,
61
358350
6719
06:05
removed an in-law from a family photo and replaced her with a bush.
62
365550
5909
06:12
That photo now hangs in the living room.
63
372149
2631
06:14
And unless you really examined it closely, you wouldn't realise at all that someone was missing.
64
374939
5880
06:20
I'm glad I'm not in your family Sam!
65
380899
2480
06:23
Most mainstream media organisations are very careful about the images they use
66
383519
3810
06:27
and how they're described particularly if those images have come from members of the public.
67
387409
4750
06:32
On social media though, anyone can publish an image and say anything about it.
68
392430
5840
06:38
And that's where people like today's guest come in.
69
398610
2130
06:41
Paulo Ordoveza is a viral image debunker.
70
401029
2971
06:44
He's known as Pic Pedant on Twitter and spends his free time verifying images
71
404100
4200
06:48
which seem to him to be not quite right.
72
408689
2190
06:51
It's an activity he took up while working as a contractor at NASA. We spoke to him earlier and asked why he does it.
73
411209
6120
07:01
Well. Partly I'm just pedantic. I'm a stickler for accuracy.
74
421620
5029
07:06
But partly it's also that I get annoyed at seeing digital art, seeing manipulated images passed off as real.
75
426980
7480
07:14
And in a sense it's, it's unfair to the people who made them because you, you rob them of attribution, you rob them of context and credit.
76
434750
8780
07:23
And I want to see justice done in that sense.
77
443610
4029
07:27
But on a grander scale it's also that small lies can later lead to bigger lies.
78
447740
5300
07:33
I've seen, I've seen cases of viral image purveyors who just grab stuff off Reddit
79
453120
7420
07:41
later be cited in bigger contexts and the damage they can do is amplified significantly by the nature of social media.
80
461180
12359
07:53
I've seen people go from historical photos and go into full blown health conspiracies about the pandemic.
81
473619
8350
08:02
I've seen nature photos lead to eco-fascism.
82
482049
3710
08:05
So you know it's the kind of thing I'd like to see nipped in the bud before it leads to grander or more harmful falsehoods.
83
485839
10040
08:15
So he sees artists' work being stolen without credit.
84
495959
3050
08:19
Fake and edited images being published as real.
85
499089
2971
08:22
And also people who do this using their popularity on social media
86
502160
3270
08:25
to promote conspiracy theories and radical action.
87
505639
3251
08:28
But how do we know that an image is fake, copied or misleading? If you do this a lot, you can spot the signs easily.
88
508970
6380
08:35
But for those of us with less experience here are a few tips from Pic Pedant.
89
515509
5120
08:40
For one thing there's context.
90
520759
1351
08:42
You want to see if, is this image too good to be true? Is it too lucky?
91
522190
5119
08:47
Sometimes a photographer will get lucky, but sometimes that image is manipulated.
92
527389
5221
08:52
Also think about what emotions these images are eliciting in you.
93
532690
6959
08:59
What are they trying to make you feel, or think, or do?
94
539870
3269
09:03
What is the publisher's aim?
95
543590
1739
09:05
Are they trying to make money or are they trying to become more popular or
96
545409
2831
09:08
are they trying to manipulate your view of the world?
97
548320
3329
09:12
And things that you need to look out for when you're looking at a viral image.
98
552889
4680
09:17
You want to look for any signs of manipulation, tell tales that it's been edited.
99
557649
6400
09:24
Sometimes the edges are too blurry, sometimes the edges are too sharp.
100
564129
3280
09:27
Sometimes the light sources are different and you'll see shadows coming, you'll see shadows in different directions.
101
567799
6541
09:34
Sometimes the perspective will be wrong or you'll see artefacts of Photoshop clone stamping
102
574420
4239
09:39
or you'll see repeating patterns that indicate that something has been, that something has been copied.
103
579019
5791
09:44
A few things to look out for there, some technical, some emotional.
104
584890
3239
09:48
We've seen throughout the series that many examples of fake news are designed to generate strong emotions
105
588210
6380
09:54
and photos are no different.
106
594710
1870
09:56
Yes. This doesn't mean that every emotional, interesting or spectacular image is suspicious.
107
596660
6879
10:03
The latest baby picture from your family are probably not fake
108
603620
4380
10:08
but with your critical thinking head on when you see images that make you feel upset, angry or outraged,
109
608080
8290
10:16
it might be worth taking a deep breath and doing a bit of investigating before you think about sharing.
110
616789
7961
10:24
And how do you investigate an image? Here's Paulo Ordoveza again with a practical tip.
111
624950
6240
10:31
The first thing I do is plug the image into a reverse image search tool like Tin Eye,
112
631639
3811
10:36
or Google image search which has a reverse image search if you click on the little camera icon in the search bar.
113
636529
6181
10:43
And that will show you repeat occurrences of the image across various web sites and how far back the repetitions go.
114
643610
8100
10:51
I have to warn you that the oldest or the largest image are not always necessarily the original image.
115
651950
7250
10:59
So you have to be able to tell from context, from the site
116
659480
2899
11:02
if that is actually the photographer or the digital artist's original image.
117
662720
6150
11:09
Also if, I found that if you search for the caption, if you do a phrase search by entering the caption in quotes into Google,
118
669049
7171
11:16
or Duck Duck Go as I use, you might find a Reddit post or some other social media post
119
676460
6030
11:22
where the image was first posted or where the image first became popular.
120
682570
4150
11:26
On certain photography sites you might be able to find the metadata for the image or the EXIF data as it's called.
121
686919
7901
11:34
And that will tell you things like what camera was used to take the image, what lens they used, what lens angle,
122
694900
7359
11:42
what F-stop, what exposure, but it will also tell you what software the image has been through.
123
702340
5419
11:47
Now remember that Photoshop is not necessarily a sign that the image has been manipulated or at least has been faked
124
707840
6660
11:54
because sometimes a photographer will take an image into Photoshop and do some minor enhancements
125
714740
5100
12:00
but that doesn't mean the image has been completely faked.
126
720259
2651
12:02
Sometimes it may mean that. Again you have to consider context.
127
722990
3769
12:07
So search for the caption that's a good tip.
128
727519
2190
12:10
Yeah that's also a good thing to do if you see a controversial meme.
129
730129
5280
12:16
You know the ones, there's a photograph of a politician or another public figure
130
736039
4980
12:21
and a quote next to that image which is supposed to be something they said or was said about them.
131
741620
6649
12:28
Put that quote into a search engine to see what comes up and you'll be able to
132
748399
4860
12:33
see if it's a real quote or something that's made up.
133
753340
3039
12:37
That's very good advice. I do that all the time and the other good suggestion is to do a reverse image search.
134
757289
6600
12:43
Are you familiar with that Sam?
135
763970
1000
12:45
Yes. So that's where you search using an image rather than text
136
765570
4859
12:50
to see if that same image has been used before on the Internet.
137
770759
5180
12:56
Shall we do a little demonstration?
138
776159
2130
12:58
Yeah let's do it.
139
778980
800
12:59
So let's take this image.
140
779860
1720
13:01
Let's imagine someone has posted this picture online today with the caption:
141
781660
4249
13:06
"The media isn't covering this but there are violent demonstrations outside parliament, please share."
142
786269
6120
13:12
OK.
143
792470
600
13:13
So I'm using a site called Tin Eye, which is one of the ones Paulo mentioned,
144
793150
4850
13:18
and I drag the image into the box here and then I let it do its thing.
145
798139
6441
13:24
It then shows me all the examples of this image it has found.
146
804779
4531
13:30
You can sort by date and see that this image has been present on the internet since at least 2012.
147
810820
8339
13:39
So it can't be from something that happened today.
148
819309
3001
13:42
The image is genuine but the description is misleading.
149
822390
3870
13:46
Thank you Sam, very useful tips there.
150
826340
1990
13:48
Now, would you please remind us of today's vocabulary.
151
828600
3370
13:53
Yes of course.
152
833210
1110
13:54
I'm going to start by picking out a word that we've used a lot today
153
834400
3639
13:58
which is 'manipulate'.
154
838490
1679
14:00
To manipulate an image means to change it or edit it in some way to deliberately mislead.
155
840889
7260
14:08
And, as we've discussed, you can also manipulate emotions.
156
848230
4000
14:12
Our guest Paulo said that he was 'pedantic', which I am about grammar,
157
852879
5260
14:18
which means being very concerned that things are correct, often things that other people are not that worried about.
158
858649
6961
14:26
And that he is 'a stickler for accuracy'.
159
866399
2721
14:29
When you are a 'stickler' for something, you expect or demand a certain level of behaviour.
160
869450
6600
14:36
If you see this phrase, you will see it mostly with the noun 'accuracy' or 'rules'.
161
876740
6240
14:44
Two words which mean nearly the same thing are 'con' and 'scam'.
162
884120
4590
14:48
These are dishonest schemes designed to trick people and take their money.
163
888980
5630
14:54
The people who carry out these schemes are 'con artists' and 'scammers'.
164
894769
5521
15:01
'Phishing' is a type of scam.
165
901370
2219
15:04
It's a trick designed to steal your banking information by getting you to log on to a fake web site with your real details.
166
904789
8521
15:13
And a 'hoax' is a kind of deception, something designed to make you believe something that isn't true.
167
913759
7591
15:21
Thank you Sam.
168
921430
600
15:22
It's very easy to manipulate images today and images can be used to manipulate our emotions.
169
922110
5899
15:28
So be sceptical, be vigilant and share safely.
170
928090
3830
15:32
And remember that just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's true.
171
932360
4760
15:37
And if something seems too good to be true,
172
937220
2250
15:40
it probably is. Goodbye.
173
940129
2520
15:42
Goodbye.
174
942730
279
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7