Ukraine: The 'cardboard revolution' enters its second day of protests
Many had believed that Ukraine's young people had all left the country to escape conscription or bombardments. Yet the youth were present in Kyiv and in several other cities across the country. On Tuesday, a young veteran who enlisted in 2023 and sported a black beard and a plain white T-shirt was the main figure who called for the protests on social media. By Wednesday, the call had spread across Facebook, with adults and elected officials included, announcing demonstrations to be held at 8 pm in Kyiv and 6 pm in regional capitals. Yet it was the country's young people, simultaneously serious and witty, who took the lead. They chose the makeshift cardboard signs to show that they did not want pre-printed posters, partisan materials or the slogans of career politicians.
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AFP
2 days ago
- AFP
Story of dead surgeon linked to Brigitte Macron is fabricated
"Surgeon linked to Brigitte Macron transgender speculation found dead," says a July 3, 2025 post on X. "Solidifies suspicion that Macron is married to an XY Groomer." The video opens by showing first responders parked below a Parisian building, with a voiceover and subtitles claiming it is the site where the surgeon, François Faivre, fell to his death. The clip goes on to depict what purports to be an interview with the dead man's sister, Anne Dupont. Then it claims to show a portion of an initial interview the surgeon gave about Brigitte Macron to the magazine Closer before his death. "According to Ms. Dupont, her brother is a colleague of the famous doctor Patrick Bui," the subtitles say. "François Faivre had promised journalists he would shed light on the controversial surgical operations of Mrs. Brigitte Macron." The rumor that a surgeon died before releasing further information on Brigitte Macron spread in articles and in posts across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok and YouTube. The claims were widespread in French and also appeared in Catalan, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese and Russian. Many posts reference the "Enquête du jour" website, where the video and an accompanying article appear to have originated. Image Screenshot of an X post taken July 25, 2025 Image Screenshot of an Instagram post taken July 25, 2025 The claims followed years of transphobic disinformation targeting the French first lady. In January, Owens released the "Becoming Brigitte" series, which claimed without substantive evidence that Brigitte Macron was not only formerly a man, but also Emmanuel Macron's blood relative. It also alleged Emmanuel Macron became France's president as part of CIA mind-control program, reigniting longstanding French conspiracy theories. On July 23, the Macrons filed a defamation suit against Owens in the US state of Delaware. More iterations of the dead-doctor narrative followed. "Of course they waited until now the file this lawsuit," says one July 24 Facebook post. "The doctor who did Brigitte's surgeries conveniently died last month." But like Owens's allegations about Brigitte Macron's gender history, the online claims that her surgeon died under suspicious circumstances are unfounded. The doctor referenced in the claims does not appear to exist, and the purported news reports cite evidence that is manipulated or entirely invented. The fabricated "François Faivre" The video claims François Faivre worked at the American Hospital of Paris alongside Patrick Bui, who supposedly spoke to him about Brigitte Macron undergoing a transgender surgery operation. While Bui does appear on the hospital's website, the medical center told AFP July 8 it had "no record of a cosmetic surgeon named François Faivre being able to practice there" (archived here). Searches of the French health insurance directory surfaced no matching results for a doctor named "François Faivre." Image Screenshot of the French state health insurance directory taken July 25, 2025 The video's depiction of the alleged doctor further suggests his identity was invented. The rail moulding on the wall disappears abruptly, and one of the hanging certificates trails off into illegible gibberish -- both common indicators of images generated be artificial intelligence. Image Screenshot of a YouTube video taken July 25, 2025 with highlights added by AFP AFP attempted to identify "François Faivre" by plugging the video's visuals into the facial-recognition tool PimEyes. The results uncovered an image of an individual on the iStock photo bank of Getty Images, published May 28, 2017 (archived here). Image Screenshots of an X post and the iStock photo library both taken July 25, 2025 The same face appears in different pieces of commercial content that are otherwise disconnected (archived here, here, here and here). AI technologies can create deceptive content based off existing photos. Further inconsistencies Other elements of the supposed report showed evidence of manipulation. For example, the images of the alleged crime scene are actually footage of Paris that AFP published October 15, 2022, nearly three years before the surgeon was claimed to have died (archived here). Image Screenshot of a Facebook post taken July 25, 2025 Image Screenshot of an AFP YouTube video taken July 25, 2025 The deepfake detector in the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, assessed that the voices in the video were "very likely generated by AI." Image Screenshot of the results accessed via the Verification Plugin tool on July 25, 2025 The shot of the doctor's supposed sister also shows signs of manipulation. The size of her eyes changes frequently, while her blinking appears irregular, again pointing towards the use of . Image Screenshot of a video on the Enquête du jour website taken July 7, 2025 Invented reports, impersonated journalists Closer, the magazine alleged to have interviewed the surgeon, confirmed to AFP July 11, 2025 that none of its journalists had ever spoken to the supposed doctor. The "Enquête du jour" website that laundered the claims, meanwhile, was created June 25 -- just one week before the article appeared -- according to domain registration data (archived here). The site was registered in Delaware under the name "Ano Nymous." As of July 25, the site is no longer available. Image Screenshot of search results for the site taken July 7, 2025 The site's articles also appropriated the identities of at least six French journalists. Audrey Parmentier, whose byline accompanied the report about the surgeon's death, confirmed to French media she did not author the stories on the website. Freelance journalist Aurélien Defer told AFP July 3 he was "completely taken aback" to discover he had been impersonated. "From what I understand, almost all of the published articles serve to give this site the appearance of a reliable and general information source in order to be able to spread false information about Brigitte Macron," he said. Image Screenshot of Enquête du jour taken July 3, 2025 Defer said the method of impersonating journalists resembled Russian disinformation campaigns, a connection also made by the misinformation monitoring service NewsGuard. NewsGuard wrote the "François Faivre" claim used similar tactics to the Russian influence operation Storm-1516 (archived here). Brigitte Macron is among a group of influential women -- including former US first lady Michelle Obama and Canada's Diana Fox Carney -- about whom AFP has debunked gendered disinformation.
France 24
2 days ago
- France 24
Meta to ban political ads in EU due to bloc's 'unworkable' rules
The EU has a bolstered legal armoury to rein in Big Tech, against which Meta has hit out with the support of the US administration under President Donald Trump. "This is a difficult decision -- one we've taken in response to the EU's incoming Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) regulation," the company said. Political, electoral and social issue advertising will no longer be allowed from October in the bloc, it said, because of "unworkable requirements" under the new rules. "Unfortunately, the TTPA introduces significant, additional obligations to our processes and systems that create an untenable level of complexity and legal uncertainty for advertisers and platforms operating in the EU," Meta added. The EU says its political advertising rules seek to increase transparency in online advertising after Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, which came to light in 2018. Cambridge Analytica was a consulting firm that was found to have improperly accessed personal data from millions of Facebook users for targeted political advertising, particularly during the 2016 US election and Brexit referendum. The change is set to impact Meta's flagship platforms Facebook and Instagram, as well as WhatsApp -- which is largely ad-free but announced in June it would be introducing new advertising features in some parts of the app. Meta said it was "not the only company to have been forced into this position". Google last year announced it would also prevent political advertising in the EU from October 2025 because of the "significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties". Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been highly critical of European rules, accusing Brussels in January of "censorship" and equating EU fines against the company to tariffs. The latest row between Meta and the EU has been over the firm's "pay or consent" system. The EU imposed a 200-million-euro ($235-million) fine in April after concluding Meta violated rules on the use of personal data on Facebook and Instagram. The company faces additional daily penalties if it does not make changes, with Brussels yet to decide whether Meta has modified the platforms enough to avoid more fines.
AFP
3 days ago
- AFP
Old clip of Yangon flash mob protest misrepresented as new anti-junta demonstration
"General Strike Committee, students' unions, and marchers from other townships demonstrated to overthrow the military dictatorship today on July 7 in Pansodan, Yangon," reads part of the Burmese-language caption of a Facebook video shared on July 7, 2025. The video -- which was viewed more than 1.7 million times -- shows people hurriedly gathering for a street protest, chanting slogans and flashing the Hunger Games-inspired three finger salute popular among pro-democracy protesters. A banner held up by those at the front of the protest reads, "July 7 keep the spirit and fight" and "Oust the military dictatorship by all means". Image Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured on July 23, 2025, with a red X added by AFP The video was also shared in similar Facebook, Instagram and TikTok posts. It circulated on the anniversary of the bloody 1962 blitz on students protesting against military rule in Yangon University. According to an article published by The Irrawaddy news outlet, eyewitnesses said hundreds were killed (archived link). Myanmar has been ruled almost continually by the military since 1962, just over a decade since independence from Britain. A 2021 coup ended a decade of transition from outright military rule, with generals justifying the power grab by alleging fraud in the previous November's elections that democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won in a landslide (archived link). The coup sparked a civil war that has killed thousands, and left 3.5 million displaced and half the nation in poverty (archived link). While local media reported that several townships in Myanmar as well as Burmese communities in South Korea and Thailand commemorated the 1962 student movement, the video circulating online does not show a protest that occurred in Yangon in July 2025 (archived here, here and here). Yangon protest 2021 A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage published four years earlier by local news outlet Mizzima (archived link). The July 7, 2021 post reads: Image Screenshot comparison of falsely shared clip (left) and the Mizzima video posted on July 7, 2021 (right) AFP reporters said the protest involved around 100 demonstrators who moved quickly through Yangon before scattering down side streets or jumping into waiting cars about two minutes later (archived link). Informants had tipped off police to previous flash mob protests and demonstrators had been arrested, read an AFP article from the time. An who covered the protest confirmed the circulating video showed the 2021 demonstration. "This is reuploaded misinformation to farm engagement," they said. An AFP photo journalist also said the video showed the 2021 Yangon protest: "This was when flash protests were being organised amidst violent crackdowns targeting anti-coup protestors." "There were no protests in Yangon on July 7, 2025," they added. The falsely circulating video also corresponds to a video AFP published of the 2021 demonstration (archived link). "Around a hundred protesters march in central Yangon to mark the anniversary of the 1962 Yangon university protests during which more than a hundred people died and thousands were arrested in a violent crackdown by the military regime," reads part of the video's description. AFP has debunked other false claims about Myanmar's military coup and the subsequent unrest.
