I finally looked up whether those '5G causes bird death' headlines were real

There was this video going around with like a million views showing dead birds near a cell tower, captions saying 5G did it. I got curious and actually looked up the study they were referencing. Turns out the original research was about weather radar disorienting birds during migration, nothing to do with 5G at all. The video just slapped a 5G label on old footage from 2019. Has anyone else fact checked a viral video and found the source was completely different?

3 comments

3 Comments

wright.leo8d ago

Dude same. @lucasw84 exactly right about the captions thing. I checked one about "5G killing bees" that had millions of views. The original source was a 2017 study about pesticide runoff near farms. They just recycled the footage and wrote new text over it. The internet is basically a game of telephone at this point. People see the scary title and share it without checking anything. Makes me wonder how many of these panic videos are just old stuff with new labels.

lucasw848d ago

Did the video even show real dead birds or was it just animated? People will believe anything with a scary caption.

blair708d ago

Oh yeah, I've fallen for stuff like that before too. Spent way too long one night watching what I thought was a live feed of a volcano erupting. Turned out to be a looped clip from 2018 with a new date slapped on it. Felt like a complete fool when my buddy pointed it out. Your mileage may vary, but I've learned to pause and check the source before sharing anything these days. It's wild how fast this stuff spreads even when it's totally fake.