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The 500 person 'viral' protest photo was actually from 2019, I checked the tree line
I was scrolling through a trending article about a big rally in Portland and the main photo looked off to me. The building in the background had a sign that got removed in 2020, I remember reading about it. So I did a reverse image search and found the exact same shot on a stock site with a 2019 date stamp. The article claimed it was from last Saturday and used it as proof of crowd size. That got me thinking about how often outlets recycle old photos for new stories. I started checking the shadows and street signs in every viral image now. Has anyone else caught a news site using an old photo to push a current narrative?
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jessem591mo ago
Stock photos get reused all the time, that's just how the news works when they need a quick visual and the real crowd is too small or too spread out to look dramatic. The sign being gone in 2020 proves nothing about the photo being fake, it could just be a mistake in the file date or the stock site updating their library. If the actual event happened and people showed up, the story is still true, so why does the exact picture matter that much?
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