Rumble Crashes, Conspiracies Fly
PLUS: Google is Not Censoring the Russian Ruble; Quiz: Can You Tell Real from Fake?
Welcome to NewsGuard's Reality Check, a report on how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Today:
Big brother or big traffic? Rumble outage during debate fuels cyberattack speculation
Spreadsheet misinformation: Google Sheets falsely accused of blacklisting the Russian ruble
A NewsGuard quiz: Test your ability to spot an AI-generated image
And more…
Today’s newsletter was edited by Jack Brewster and Eric Effron.
1. Rumble Outage Before Presidential Debate Sparks Claims of ‘Big Brother’ Plot
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Just as the first 2024 presidential debate was about to kick off, Rumble, the video-sharing platform beloved by many conservatives, went offline.
Naturally, the internet went wild with claims of a sinister plot.
What happened: On June 27, 2024, about 30 minutes before the debate, Rumble crashed, leaving users staring at blank screens.
According to downdetector.com, a website that tracks internet outages, 8,111 users reported issues at the outage’s peak. The platform was down for roughly an hour beginning approximately at 8:30 p.m. EDT.
Cue the conspiracy theories: Social media platforms, especially X, lit up with speculation as users claimed that the CIA, CNN, and/or “Big Brother” had orchestrated a cyberattack to silence conservatives during the debate.
Eric Spracklen, a pro-Trump commentator and former Project Veritas communications director, was one of the first to weigh in, tweeting at 8:50 p.m., “BREAKING: @rumblevideo is down in apparent DDoS attack just minutes before the Presidential Debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.” A DDoS attack is a type of cyberattack where multiple systems overwhelm a target, causing a denial of service.
InfoWars anchor Owen Shroyer followed with a tweet at 9:01 p.m.: “Did CNN/CIA shut down Rumble so no one could stream the debate?”
Pro-Trump social media user Eric Moutsos tweeted at 8:59 p.m., “Big brother has shut down Rumble so far for the debate tonight. … Doesn’t look like they want eyeballs on Rumble vs. YouTube. Anyone else experiencing this?”
Actually: It was a traffic spike, not Big Brother, the CIA, or CNN.
In a post on X, Rumble said that the outage was due to higher than usual traffic, stating, “Felt like the entire internet decided to come to Rumble all at once. It knocked us down for few, but we’re back up.”
Context: Internet outages are often fodder for false claims.
In March, conservative commentators baselessly claimed that outages at Meta-owned platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Threads were part of an election interference plot.
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.
2. Spreadsheet Shenanigans: Google Sheets Did Not Remove the Ruble from its Currency Comparisons
By Mascha Wolf
No, “cancel culture” did not come for the Russian ruble on Google Sheets.
What happened: Pro-Russian websites and social media users on Telegram and X falsely claimed that Google Sheets has removed the Russian ruble from its currency list.
A closer look: The false claim originated on the German Telegram Channel Neulandrebellen (“New territory rebels”), which publishes pro-Russian content.
The post, viewed over 80,000 times, stated that “Cancel culture has moved from sports to banks and now also to spreadsheets. Users worldwide are no longer even allowed to make a calculation in which rubles could appear.”
Actually: Google Sheets has not removed the Russian ruble as a currency option.
A test conducted by Correctiv, a German fact-checker, confirmed that the ruble remains available.
NewsGuard independently verified that the ruble was listed on Google Sheets as of June 20, 2024. The misleading screenshot used to support the false narrative likely showed the ruble already selected, which moves it to the top of the list rather than its usual alphabetical position.
Where it spread: The false narrative spread primarily through pro-Russia Telegram channels, on X, and News-Pravda.de, a pro-Russian website that is part of the Pravda Network.
The initial June 3, 2024, post by the Telegram channel was reshared the same day by Neues aus Russland (“News from Russia”), the largest pro-Russian Telegram channel in the German-speaking world.
Neues aus Russland, which has over 180,000 subscribers, shared the claim in both German and Russian, significantly expanding its reach to over 100,000 views on this channel alone.
Additionally, the false narrative was picked up by a pro-Russian website within the Pravda Network, a collective of 73 anonymously owned sites that republish content from pro-Kremlin sources. NewsGuard has found that this network frequently advances false or egregiously misleading information about the Russia-Ukraine war.
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3. And one more thing: Can You Spot the AI? Test Your Skills with NewsGuard’s Reality Check Challenge
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What happened: In June 2024, a competition for the best AI-generated images announced its winners, including a photo by Miles Astray titled “F L A M I N G O N E.” Shortly after his win, Astray revealed in a June 13 post on X that the image was actually a real photo.
Context: AI-generated images are becoming increasingly common, with text-to-image algorithms creating over 15 billion images between April 2022 and August 2023, according to the technology blog Everypixel.
These advanced tools make it harder than ever to distinguish real images from fake ones. Even those familiar with AI could only correctly identify AI-generated images half the time, according to a June 2023 poll by website provider Nexcess.
To test your ability to spot AI-generated images, NewsGuard has compiled a series of images — some real, some from NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints, which debunk manipulated and AI-generated media. See how well you can identify AI-generated images below.
See correct answers below.
Pro-Palestine protesters in France seen giving Nazi salute
President Joe Biden meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping
Father leading his children through rubble in Gaza
Smoke rises from the Pentagon
Answers:
AI
Real
AI
AI
If you see something, say something
If you see or hear something that you think may be provably false, please alert NewsGuard via realitycheck@newsguardtech.com and we'll do our best to get to the bottom of it. Note: Tips should not include content that you simply disagree with, however strongly.
Reality Check is 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.