Milestone: NewsGuard has found 750 AI-generated “news” websites
PLUS: New moon landing triggers galaxy-sized hoax; panic over a Facebook outage and spying accusations against iPhones
Welcome to NewsGuard's Reality Check, a report on how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Today:
Latest U.S. lunar mission fires up deniers on TikTok
Facebook outage spawns election fraud claims
iSpy debunked: Apple's iPhone 15 is not eyeing you with hidden cameras, its French hoaxsters admit to us
And more…
Today’s newsletter was edited by Jack Brewster and Eric Effron.
AI Content Farm Tracker: 750 Sites and Counting
AI content farms are taking over the internet, and NewsGuard analysts track their spread. Read more about AI content farms, and how they are proliferating:
1. Moon Landing Deniers Question Latest Moon Landing
It’s been half a century since the U.S. put a spacecraft on the moon. It took hours for hoaxsters and conspiracy theorists on TikTok to claim that the latest mission was faked.
What happened: Moon landing deniers are flooding TikTok with baseless claims that the Feb. 22, 2024, landing of Odysseus — the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in 53 years — was staged.
A closer look: The moon deniers’ evidence? An animated video that Intuitive Machines, the company behind the private, unmanned Odysseus spacecraft, released in 2022.
“We are told that this is the view from above the spacecraft landing on the moon,” TikTok user @wildtiktoknews wrote in a Feb. 24, 2024, post. “We now have two separate angles of this spacecraft landing on the moon. But again I ask, who is filming? Who set the camera down on the moon to get the ground angle of the spaceship landing on the moon?” Wild TikTok News' post had 282,000 views as of March 11, 2024.
Watch Wild TikTok News' video below:
In another video that garnered 341,000 views, user @officialtruthseeker posted a clip of the animated video with the caption, “Odysseus ‘moon’ landing.” After playing a clip of the animated video, the user said: “Do you honestly think they took this to the moon?”
Watch Official Truth Seeker’s video below:
NewsGuard identified 13 other viral videos falsely claiming that the landing was faked. In total, the 15 videos NewsGuard found garnered 1,780,000 views as of March 13.
Actually: Odysseus did land on the moon, though it did run out of power on Feb. 29, a week after landing.
Intuitive Machines originally posted the animated video (which was clearly labeled as such) to YouTube in February 2022 to promote Odysseus’s February 2024 mission.
OK, but: Some social media users pointed to the absence of live video footage of Odysseus as further evidence that the landing was staged. “WHY NOT LIVE? #fake #moon #mission #was #not #live,” read one post that had generated 537,000 views as of March 11, 2024.
In fact, Odysseus was not equipped with video recording equipment, and therefore did not capture live footage of its descent, according to Intuitive Machines. However, the company released real photos documenting the moments after Odysseus touched down on the moon.
Click here to find out more about NewsGuard Trust Scores and our process for rating websites. You can download NewsGuard’s browser extension, which displays NewsGuard Trust Score icons next to links on search engines, social media feeds, and other platforms by clicking here.
2. Super Glitchy Tuesday: Facebook Outage Sparks Misdirected Outrage
It’s remarkable how much havoc a two-hour partial social media blackout can wreak.
What happened: A two-hour Facebook and Instagram outage on Super Tuesday, the day 15 states cast their presidential primary votes, led websites and social media users to baselessly claim that the disruptions were part of a larger election interference scheme ahead of the November 2024 general election.
The misinformers did not specify whom they believed was behind the supposed scheme, nor did they detail how the March 5 outages would impact any party or candidate.
A closer look: “They’re showing us what they can do in real-time,” WND.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 17.5/100) stated in a March 5 article about the Facebook outage. The article was titled, “‘Practice run for November?’ Facebook, related sites go dark on Super Tuesday.”
Similarly, a March 5 Telegram post by @MJTruth, which regularly posts pro-Trump content, stated: “Today is Super Tuesday and almost every single major tech platform is down. That is not a coincidence… The very definition of a ‘Dry-Run’ is ‘a rehearsal of a performance or procedure before the real one.’” The post garnered more than 30,000 views.
Actually: There's no evidence linking these outages to any impact on elections. Moreover, none of the social media posts or articles pushing this narrative provided a theory as to how these Meta interruptions might tie into an election interference strategy.
To underscore just how groundless these claims are, here's some more context:
The outages impacted some 500,000 users around the world — not just U.S. voters.
An unnamed U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency senior official told reporters on March 5 that there were no known threats aimed at disrupting the Super Tuesday elections.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a March 5 X post that the outages were caused by an unspecified “technical issue.”
Outrage over outages: Outages and other technological malfunctions are frequent fodder for misinformers, who prey on the helplessness some people feel during times of crisis.
Just last month, for example, far-right websites including The Gateway Pundit (Trust Score: 30/100) and The People’s Voice (Trust Score: 0/100) falsely claimed that an Internet outage prevented thousands of South Carolinians from voting in the 2024 GOP primary.
Do you work in Trust and Safety for a technology company, in brand safety for advertising or otherwise counter misinformation as part of your job? Find out about NewsGuard’s weekly Risk Briefings, a more detailed briefing for professionals. Click here.
3. And one more thing: ‘Eye-phone’? Apple Did Not Insert Spy Cams into the iPhone 15
By Natalie Huet
Ever get the creepy feeling that your phone is watching you? Read on …
What happened: A video shot by two self-proclaimed “digital illusionists” in France is being misrepresented on X as proof that Apple has inserted tiny spy cams into the iPhone 15 to watch users.
The video was originally posted on TikTok and Instagram in November 2023 by identical twins known as “Les French Twins.” The twins, Tony and Jordan, frequently post videos of themselves performing digital stunts. The duo appeared on France’s “Got Talent” TV program in 2016.
The viral video shows one of the twins deftly using scissors to remove what appears to be a camera lens from an iPhone 15 Pro.
He then seemingly activates the camera lens via Bluetooth on another iPhone and walks around the room while his brother watches his movements on the phone's screen, making it look like a spy gadget straight out of a movie.
Confused? So are we. Watch the video for yourself below:
The video spread to X and other platforms, where it was frequently taken as real.
“You are being spied on by #Apple Mini EYE,” one user stated in French on X. The post had more than 3 million views as of March 13.
Nearly identical posts were shared in other languages including English, Arabic, and Portuguese.
Actually: The video is just an illusion, as the twins confirmed to NewsGuard in a March 2024 phone interview.
“It's just a magic trick,” Tony told NewsGuard. “We did not insert anything [into the iPhone], there is no tiny camera.”
“People who follow us on our account know what we do and that it’s fake,” he added. “But if a video is taken out of context and posted on other pages by people who aren’t magicians, it can cause confusion.”
Produced by co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
We launched Reality Check after seeing how much interest there is in our work beyond the business and tech communities that we serve. Subscribe to this newsletter to support our apolitical mission to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.