A misleading news video with images from NOS and Omroep Brabant is circulating on Instagram. It seems as if an app is being promoted with which you can earn a lot of money very quickly. The fake news video was put together with AI. The Omroep Brabant images used in it are from 2018 and are about a completely different subject. Expert Alexander Pleijter, who specializes in fake news, thinks it is a worrying video: “I have not yet come across this in the Netherlands.”
The fake item is about an app that could help people get rich quickly. The item states that this game was created by the famous American YouTuber Mr. Beast, and that the Dutch have already earned twenty million euros from it. With the app it would be very easy to earn a lot of money in a short time.
Twenty million euros
The video starts with presenter Annechien Steenhuizen who talks about the app in the NOS setting. But she never actually said what she says in the video. The text is with artificial intelligence, AI, created. A shot of young people screaming hysterically follows. You then see images from Omroep Brabant, in which a woman is interviewed on the street about the many new cars in her street.
The images from Omroep Brabant suggest that the people in the street have new cars because they have earned money with the app, but nothing could be further from the truth. The images come from an interview from 2018, in which residents of Son en Breugel talk about what winning a prize in the Postcode Lottery has done to them.
‘A very low way’
The fact that images and voices can be edited with the help of AI in such a way that it seems as if people are saying things they never said is not new. But the fact that two Dutch news organizations are being abused to market a game is, according to Alexander Pleijter, a fake news researcher at the University of Leiden. “This is really a completely new form, which I have not yet encountered in the Netherlands.”
Pleijter calls the video ‘very creative’ and says that although the technology is known, it is not easy to put together a video like this. He’s worried. “In fact it is a form of scam, it is worrying that people are being seduced with it.” He speaks of ‘a very low way of seducing people’.
Who is behind this?
The game does not have a good rating in Apple’s app store, it receives 1.6 out of 5 stars from users. A Dutch user complains: “If you bet 50 euros, you have to play for 35,000 euros in a week before you have the right to get paid out. Completely out of proportion and unfeasible.” By the way, there is no mention of making money in the description of the game.
It turns out to be difficult to find out who exactly is behind the video. The YouTuber who supposedly made it, Mr. Beast, doesn’t actually develop games. In the app store, one Paulius Drozdov is listed as a developer, a name that does not appear anywhere online.
Reliability
Pleijter believes it is important to warn against this type of deception. “NOS and Omroep Brabant always score high in surveys when it comes to reliability. I can imagine that it seems very believable to people.”
As a tip, if in doubt, he gives you to Google the app in question. “And you can always submit it to fact-checking clubs if you have any doubts, for example with us, at Nieuwscheckers. We can then always check whether the video is correct.”
This is the fake news video making the rounds on Instagram:
International news media are also abused to advertise the game:
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