Fake Video: Crabs NOT Crossing Road In Florida After Hurricane Irma

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

A Facebook page named Ebuzz posted a video purporting to be from Florida after hurricane Irma, showing thousands of crabs crossing a road:

The video racked up at least 17 million views in six hours.

crabs.jpg

The video is not from Florida and it was not taken after hurricane Irma. It is actually a continuously looping snippet taken from a nature documentary about Cuba:

The relevant part is about 4:20 in. It shows the annual migration of thousands of crabs near the Bay of Pigs in Cuba (more here). Don't be fooled by hoax videos like this: liking, sharing and commenting on them will get the owners of the page that posted it more visibility on Facebook (which is probably the reason why they posted a faked video. Don't help them, instead post the original video if you liked it.


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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