Student protests over the condition of schools in France recently escalated to broader demonstrations against a rising cost of living, ultimately splintering into what The New York Times described as "chaos" and sparking an outpouring of false or misleading claims about the severity of the demonstrations.
While shocking truths can come to light thanks to acts of protest, the flip side for fact-checkers is a growing number of requests to verify claims that involve visual media like images and videos. The unregulated use of artificial intelligence tools and the fast-spreading nature of social media have made it easy for such false or misleading claims about protests to spread.
We dug into the Snopes archives to collect a variety of claims that involved fake or misleading images or videos related to protests.
Every couple of years, the same false stories come back. A claim that an election was rigged before a single vote was cast. An old video of violence, stripped of its date and place, presented as b...