Iran’s Leader Declared Most Powerful Man by (Faked) Forbes Cover
PLUS: YouTube Didn’t Promise to Rig the U.S. Election; Fake Wind Turbine Tale Spins Out of Control
Welcome to NewsGuard's Reality Check, a report on how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Today:
No, YouTube didn't vow to rig the election for Biden
State Department official did not predict Moscow terror attack
Fabricated Forbes cover touts Iranian leader as the “Most Powerful Man”
Gone with the wind turbine: CGI turbine takedown tricks thousands
And more…
Today’s newsletter was edited by Jack Brewster and Eric Effron.
1. YouTube Is Baselessly Accused of Election Interference
What happened: Online users are baselessly claiming that YouTube, which is owned by Google, declared it has a “moral responsibility” to rig the 2024 U.S. election for U.S. President Joe Biden.
“YouTube has declared that it has a ‘moral responsibility’ to tweak its algorithm in order to help the Democrats defeat Trump in the 2024 election,” a March 29, 2024, article published by California-based The People’sVoice.tv (NewsGuard Trust Score: 0/100) stated.
The People’s Voice article was shared to social media platforms including X, Facebook, Patreon, Telegram, and Russian social network VK. Social media posts advancing the false claim were published in multiple languages, including Russian, Spanish, and English.
A closer look: The claim appears to be based on a March 2024 video of YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich speaking about the platform’s growth areas for 2024, the Australian Associated Press (Trust Score: 95/100) first reported in April 2024.
The People’s Voice claimed that Voolich spoke about the “Four Rs of Responsibility,” a YouTube strategy launched in September 2019 to moderate harmful content on the platform — which they suggested would be used to help Biden.
The four Rs, which stand for “remove, reduce, raise, and reward,” are used internally by YouTube to detect and remove potentially harmful content found to be in violation of the platform’s policies, including its ban on hate speech and terrorist recruitment videos.
Actually: Voolich did not mention the four Rs in her video, and the strategy is not related to elections specifically.
Moreover, Voolich, the YouTube executive, did not specifically mention Biden or the 2024 U.S. election at any point during the video, and a NewsGuard’s review of YouTube’s press releases and blog posts found no evidence of any such statement.
As reported by the Australian Associated Press, “The only mention of elections comes at the 6:23 mark when Ms Voolich says: ‘This year’s also interesting because did you know that 40 percent of the globe is going through elections in 2024. That really hones in on the importance of our responsibility work, making sure that our viewers can get authoritative, and useful information in such important times.’”
Learn more about "The Death of Truth."
2. Nostradamus She's Not: Former U.S. Official Didn’t Predict Moscow Attack
By Giulia Pozzi
What happened: Social media accounts falsely suggest that then-U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland predicted the deadly March 22, 2024, Moscow concert hall attack.
It’s an apparent attempt to blame the attack that killed more than 130 on the West, even after the militant jihadist Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility.
An April 4, 2024, X post by anonymous user @AstarionPereira said: “Timeline: 1) Victoria Nuland's announcement of nasty surprises 2) U.S askscitizens [sic] to stay away from gatherings and concerts in Moscow 3) Terror attack in Moscow at the Crocus City Hall.Tell me again that this is a coincidence. Your buddies are frogmarching us to World War 3.”
Actually: There is no “frogmarching” to see here.
The posts misrepresent remarks made by Nuland, who retired in March 2024, during a February 2024 event at the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, which marked the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
During the speech, Nuland said that Russian President Vladimir Putin could face “nasty surprises” on the battlefield as a result of additional U.S. funding to Ukraine, not due to a terrorist attack in Russia, according to Italian fact-checkers Facta (Trust Score: 100/100) and Open, which first debunked the narrative.
There is no evidence that the U.S. or its allies were behind the Moscow terrorist attack, for which IS claimed responsibility in a March 22, 2024, statement.
Do you work in Trust and Safety for a technology company, in brand safety for advertising or otherwise counter misinformation as part of your job? Find out about NewsGuard’s weekly Risk Briefings, a more detailed briefing for professionals. Click here.
3. Faux Forbes: Fabricated Cover Crowns Khamenei World’s ‘Most Powerful Man’
By McKenzie Sadeghi and Jack Brewster
In today’s edition of "I can’t believe someone would actually believe this," we're looking at a poorly photoshopped fake Forbes cover featuring Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei labeled as the world's "most powerful man.”
What happened: Users on X who appear to be pro-Iranian and pro-Palestian shared the fake Forbes cover featuring Iran’s supreme leader beginning April 16, following Iran’s failed attack against Israel on April 13.
“Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is featured on the cover of Forbes magazine with the caption ‘The Most Powerful Man in the World,’ the X account @Sprinterfactory posted.
From X, the false claim spread to TikTok, YouTube, Telegram, Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, Instagram, and Facebook, appearing in multiple languages including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, Persian, Portuguese, and Turkish.
The cover was also published by pro-Iranian sites, apparently in an effort to bolster Khamenei’s image following Iran’s unsuccessful missile and drone strike against Israel.
Actually: Forbes did not dedicate its cover to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to a NewsGuard review of Forbes’s past covers and a spokesperson for the magazine.
A Forbes spokesperson told NewsGuard in an April 2024 email: "We can confirm that the image in question is not a real Forbes cover and was never published on any of our platforms.”
In context: Forbes’s “World's Most Powerful People” list, which was last updated in 2018, ranked Khamenei as the world’s 17th most powerful person. The cover of Forbes’s latest issue featured American billionaire Todd Boehly and was published on April 1, 2024, almost two weeks before Iran’s attack on Israel.
Click here to find out more about NewsGuard Trust Scores and our process for rating websites. You can download NewsGuard’s browser extension, which displays NewsGuard Trust Score icons next to links on search engines, social media feeds, and other platforms by clicking here.
4. And One More Thing: Viral Wind Turbine Catastrophe Is Just Hot Air
Last week, we asked our readers to send us examples of AI satire being mistaken for real news. In response, Dustin Wright, a 37-year-old freelance copywriter/tech journalist and “Reality Check” reader, sent back the video below of a wind turbine apparently tearing itself apart from spinning too quickly. “Fake Windmill video passed along as real,” Wright said.
We asked NewsGuard’s climate change reporter Zack Fishman to look into the viral video, which has garnered hundreds of thousands of likes on Instagram and Facebook in March and April 2024. Fishman reports that despite the video appearing real, it’s a complete fake.
Nonetheless, Instagram user @theicymbols presented the video as if it depicted a real disaster, writing in an accompanying caption, “If a windmill starts spinning too fast, it can potentially damage its components, leading to mechanical failures or even complete collapse.”
Actually: Everything in the video — the exploding turbine, the horses, the window, and the rural landscape — is computer-generated, Fishman reports.
The video was created by artist Travis Sattler, a self-described “3D Guru” who posted the animation on Instagram in February 2019, Snopes (Trust Score: 100/100) first reported.
In his original post, Sattler included hashtags noting that the video was “#CGI” [Computer-generated imagery] and “#3drender [three dimensional render].” Many social media users apparently didn’t get the message … or just ignored it.
Some context: Wind turbines are designed to stop spinning when wind speeds are too high to avoid damage, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
However, some turbines have been damaged by spinning too quickly. In May 2023, a turbine in Massachusetts, suspected of having a loose or broken brake, shed pieces of its blades while spinning. It continued to spin uncontrollably until workers managed to attach an emergency brake, as reported by Boston 25 News (Trust Score: 92.5/100).
Produced by co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
We launched Reality Check after seeing how much interest there is in our work beyond the business and tech communities that we serve. Subscribe to this newsletter to support our apolitical mission to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.