Rumours are older than the internet
In 1969, a rumour that Paul McCartney had died and been replaced by a lookalike spread through US college radio, with fans hunting for "clues" in Beatles album art. The internet did not invent celebrity hoaxes; it removed the delay. A similar theory claiming Avril Lavigne was replaced by a double has circulated online for years, mostly as a running joke that some readers take literally.
The new problem: synthetic receipts
In March 2023, an AI-generated image of Pope Francis in a white puffer jacket fooled huge numbers of people; it had been made with the image generator Midjourney. Two months later, a fake image of an explosion near the Pentagon spread from official-looking accounts and was linked to a brief dip in US stocks. Cloned voices and face-swapped video now make "I saw it with my own eyes" weaker evidence than it used to be.
The Streisand effect
In 2003, Barbra Streisand sued over an aerial photograph of the California coast that showed her home. The lawsuit drew far more attention to the photo than it had ever had before. "Streisand effect" now describes how trying to suppress a claim can make it spread, which is one reason a celebrity's silence or denial is not, by itself, evidence either way.
A habit you can run in thirty seconds
Digital literacy researcher Mike Caulfield's SIFT method is simple: Stop before reacting; Investigate the source; Find better coverage; Trace claims, quotes and media back to their original context. Most viral rumours fail at step two: the source turns out to be an anonymous account, a parody page or a site built to farm clicks.
Screenshot red flags
- Fonts, spacing or icons that do not match the app's real interface for that date.
- Missing timestamps, cropped usernames or no visible reply count.
- Engagement numbers that are implausible for the account.
- A post nobody can find on the actual profile or in web archives.
- Only one account sharing it, with everyone else quoting that account.
Tools that help
- Reverse image search with Google Lens or TinEye to see where a picture first appeared.
- The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to check whether a page really said what a screenshot claims.
- The InVID-WeVerify browser plugin to split videos into keyframes for searching.
- Fact-checkers such as Snopes, Reuters Fact Check, AP Fact Check and Full Fact.
How we label things
On this site, confirmed means at least two independent, credible sources or a primary record such as a court ruling or an on-the-record statement. Reported means a credible outlet has published it but it is not independently confirmed. Rumour means nobody accountable has put their name to it. If we cannot tell, we say so, and we update when the evidence changes.