No, you're not that good at spotting fake videos—two misinformation experts explain why and how you can develop the strength to resist these deceptions

Someone following the conflict raging in the Middle East might have seen the following two videos on social media. The first shows a little boy hovering over his father's corpse, whimpering in Arabic: “Don't leave me.” The second image is said to show a pregnant woman with her stomach slashed open and supposedly documents the statement of a medic after the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, treated the bodies of the victims.

Although these videos come from different sides of the Israel-Hamas war, what they share goes far beyond what divides them. Because although both videos are real, they have nothing to do with the events they supposedly depict. The boy's clip comes from Syria in 2016; the woman is from Mexico in 2018.

Cheap but effective counterfeits

Current headlines warn of sophisticated, AI-controlled deepfakes. But it's cheap, low-tech fakes like these that are fueling the latest round of disinformation. Cheap counterfeits are the Swiss army knife in the propagandist's tool belt. Changing a date, a change of location, or even repurposing a clip from a video game and passing it off as a battlefield battle requires little know-how but is effective in causing confusion.

The good news is that you can avoid being taken in by such tricks – not by closely examining the evidence, which could easily mislead you, but by waiting until trusted sources confirm what you see. However, this is often difficult to achieve.

Most people are unable to detect such tricks. Research we discuss in our new book, Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online, shows that almost everyone falls for it.

In the largest survey of its kind, 3,446 high school students evaluated a video on social media that purported to show voter fraud in the 2016 Democratic primary. Students could watch all or part of the video, or leave the footage to search for information about it online. Typing a few keywords into their browser would have led students to articles from Snopes and the BBC debunking the video. Only three students – less than a tenth of 1% – found the true source of the video, which was actually filmed in Russia.

Your lying eyes

Why were students so consistently deceived? We've found that the problem is that many people, young and old, believe they can look at something online and say what it is. You don't know how easily your eyes can be fooled – especially by shots that trigger your emotions.

When an inflammatory video evades your prefrontal cortex and lands in your solar plexus, your first impulse is to share your outrage with others. What is a better approach? One might assume that the question is whether the clip is true or false. But another question—more like a set of related questions—is a better place to start.

• Do you really know what you are seeing?

• Can you really say whether the footage is of atrocities by Russian forces in Donbass just because it's so loud in the headline and you sympathize with the Ukrainian cause?

• Is the person who posted the footage an established reporter, someone who will risk his status and prestige if it turns out to be fake, or a random person?

• Is there a link to a longer video – the shorter the clip, the more caution should be exercised – or does it claim to speak for itself, even if the headline and caption leave little room for linking?

These questions do not require advanced knowledge of video forensics. All they ask is that you be honest with yourself. Your inability to answer these questions should be enough to make you realize that you don't really know what you're looking at.

Patience is a powerful tool

Social media reports of “breaking news” are unlikely to be published at all, but are often pushed by rage mongers who interpret a YouTube video with lightning bolt emojis and a series of exclamation points. Reliable reporters need time to figure out what happened. Rage traders don't do that. The deceiver and the propagandist feed on the impatient. Your greatest information literacy superpower is learning to wait.

If the video contains sections, you can be sure that you are not the only one watching it. There are many people, some of whom have mastered advanced video analysis techniques, who are probably already analyzing the whole thing and trying to get to the bottom of it.

They don't have to wait long to find out what they've found.

This article was republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trusted analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Sam Wineburg, Stanford University and Michael Caulfield, University of Washington

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The authors do not work for, advise, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic employment.