How Paris Protest Fire “Actually Looked” was Completely False, Shut Down With the Facts

It seems that the protests in France are being severely exaggerated, with facts about the event getting extremely distorted, some distortions made extremely visible through the perspective a particular photo was taken from.

Different camera angles, photographic tricks, all kinds of techniques of manipulation have been deployed so far in coverage of what is going down in France: or have they been?

It turns out, a meme circulating about photographic manipulation exaggerating what is going on in France is actually incorrect itself. It gave AFP Fact Check an opportunity to flex and convince people we need “fact checking” organizations to police the Internet. So, they did a little fact checking on the photo.

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

Was that really the same photo from two different perspectives? AFP pointed out, no, those are definitely two separate photos.

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

It’s kind of sad that this was pointed out by an organization that was probably promoted specifically to combat dissenting opinions and alternative viewpoints to the mainstream. Why couldn’t some independent thinkers and fact-checkers not connected to the establishment have pointed this out?

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

To be fair, the AFP was falsely accused of deceiving people so they kind of had to defend themselves, but in fact AFP didn’t capture any of those frames, as they pointed out.

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

It’s unfortunately true that most people don’t check their facts before believing them. Most people aren’t built to research things at length, or at least don’t allow themselves to develop that ability very much, and that will probably never change.

Not everybody is prone to research, this type of thing happens. AFP ended up reporting that the first image was captured on December 1 by a specific photographer mentioned below.

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

It turns out, the second photo was snapped on December 8, on Friedland Ave in Paris.

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

AFP just kept going, talking about how the juxtaposition of two different photos was a clever, deceptive way to make a meme. True, one little lie can mislead a lot of people.

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

They took it a level even further, and pointed out specific details about the two photos that helped determine where they were taken.

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

For some reason, they referred to this simple meme as “globalized disinformation.” It’s not that serious, what’s more serious is the notion of censorship just because disinformation also inevitably exists.

(Image credit: AFPFactCheck)

Truthfully, there’s an agenda behind an organization like this trying to be the arbiters of what is true and false. There are some issues in this world that are not backed by the kind of solid fact that fact-checking organizations would demand to believe something, and people should retain the right to freely report and discuss that which is only a theory.

In any case, some person just pointed out the gullibility of a lot of people, that wasn’t useful for anybody. Hopefully the good people of France will get everything they need to be free and prosperous, and their government will actually listen to what they have to say.