Can We Trust What We See?: A New Age of Internet Misinformation

I am watching a TikTok of a man mouthing along to an extremely sassy “moo” sound. The caption reads, “The chokehold this c*nty cow has on me is unmatched” (@unapolygetic). I immediately think it cannot actually be a recording of a cow, so click on the sound to see the original video. Low and behold, there, in front of my eyes is a calf, alone in her pen making the “c*nty” moo. In the background, a woman’s voice (I assume the farmer’s) proudly says “oh, you found your moo. Good job.” It’s funny and sweet. The video has 5.4M favourites (@inbloomie on TikTok). I send it to my friend and think nothing more of the cow and her c*nty moo.

Later, my friend replies telling me I’ve been fooled. I rewatched the TikTok, this time opening the comments: “LMAO HALF YALL DONT GET IT” (@skz4lif3r), “THIS CANNot BE REAL HELLO??” (@memph1iis) I, along with thousands of others, had been tricked. The real sound comes from Seok Mathew, a K-pop star from the band @ZEROBASEONE, who alters his voice to make low or high moo sounds to control an animated cow. Seeing and hearing Seok Mathew’s video– the actual original source of the “moo’- it seems ridiculous that I ever believed a cow was making the sound. I’m disappointed, I liked the idea of a c*nty cow exists somewhere. And I am embarrassed.

This is one of many occasions where I have been tricked by something online. In this case it’s harmless, hurting only my pride. In other instances, though, misinformation on social media can be dangerous, inciting hatred and violence. And within five minutes of figuring out “Moothew” (as the cow meme has been named) was fake, I was deceived by another TikTok.

The video, which has since been deleted, showed CCTV footage of a man inspecting someone sleeping on the street. He leaves the frame before returning with a slab of concrete. He attacks and murders the sleeping man. An AI-generated voice narrates the video, labelling the man as a migrant. Naively but naturally, I went to the comments for an explanation: why, where and how did this terrible thing happen? The comments were riddled with racist and anti-immigration sentiments, blaming the UK’s migration policies for the tragedy. But as I investigated the video further, I realised it wasn’t even in the UK. The footage was from Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Of course, this doesn’t make the crime any less horrific, but it does make the comments about the UK’s immigration policy redundant and shows how easy it is for blame to be placed online by anonymous users hiding behind TikTok handles. And with the rise of AI that can distort images and videos, it seems as if we are getting farther away from trusting what we see.

As a result of reading the comments on this video for a little too long, my algorithm began exposing me to more and more racialised hatred. I was exposed to another side of social media that is normally hidden from me.

Of course, it is not a new phenomenon for migrants and people of colour to be scapegoats. But where in the past it was easier to determine which news sources were reputable and which were not; with social media it is far harder to navigate. The comments on the Rotterdam video were worryingly similar to the shouts of the racist rioters last summer in the UK – an example of a tragic crime being misconstrued online by the far-right, Tommy Robinson and Andrew Tate, which led to real-life violence against people of colour. We all need to be vigilant and question what we see online, as the consequences are far too huge.

Words by Flora Campbell

Cover Image Credit: Focal Foto on Flickr