Thread by @EliotHiggins

It's #InternationalFactCheckingDay, so I'm going to share with you my favourite fact check ever. It started on November 14th 2017 with this fateful tweet by @mod_russia

The Russian Ministry of Defence presented "irrefutable evidence" of the US helping ISIS so they could use ISIS to promote their interests in the Middle East. A serious charge, but I noticed something about this image. #InternationalFactCheckingDay

A very similar image had been used in this tweet two weeks earlier by a journalist claiming to show it was a Predator drone attacking an ISIS convoy, something I had dug into at the time. #InternationalFactCheckingDay

I noted that unusually there was a red "fire" button in the corner, not something you'd expect to see in drone footage, and after a quick search on YouTube found this footage. Yes, @mod_russia's "irrefutable evidence" was from a video game.
#InternationalFactCheckingDay

At the time of the earlier use of the image, claiming it was a US drone attacking ISIS, I had noted it was from a computer game, and the sort of people who follow me also follow @mod_russia, so the response to their tweet was immediate
#InternationalFactCheckingDay

The other images used by @mod_russia were quickly established as belonging to old footage from previous years, and the @mod_russia was immediately humiliated, and took the exceedingly rare step of taking down the images and reposting new images #InternationalFactCheckingDay

Unfortunately for @mod_russia, by that point the trust in their claims and drone imagery was rather shaken, and Twitter users responded by mocking them and their claims #InternationalFactCheckingDay

This was, of course, absolutely humiliating for the @mod_russia, and the press had a field day with the story, completely changing the narrative the Russian Ministry of Defence had hoped to push.
#InternationalFactCheckingDay

Even the usually pro-Russian press couldn’t help themselves, even Russia Today published an article including mocking social media posts about the debacle.
#InternationalFactCheckingDay

Aside from the absurd nature of @mod_russia’s actions, what makes this my favourite fact check is the earlier debunking of the claim about the video two weeks earlier inoculated people against this particular piece of disinformation.
#InternationalFactCheckingDay

Thanks to that, there was an immediate reaction on social media to the attempt to pass off fake images by @mod_russia, and it’s a very rare occasion where they retracted one of their many false claims.
#InternationalFactCheckingDay