Published on: 04/18/2022 – 16:31Modified on: 04/18/2022 – 16:47 A false tweet from the British international news channel BBC claims to relay a statement by Emmanuel Macron who allegedly announced the arrival in the next twenty years of “60 million refugees” on European soil. Not only these remarks were not made by the president candidate for his re-election, but the BBC never made this tweet. The supposed BBC tweet was published via its official account, if we are to believe the blue “validated” logo attached to the name of the Twitter account. It indicates in English that Emmanuel Macron is said to have said: “Europe must be ready to accept up to 60 million refugees from Africa and the Middle East over the next 20 years, because Russian sanctions will lead to economic collapse. in Africa because of its dependence on imports of Russian wheat.” Screenshots can be found both on Twitter and on Facebook, with some users presenting this statement as a “campaign promise” from the outgoing president. Macron:
“Europe will have to accept up to 60 million refugees over the next 20 years from Africa and the Middle East, as sanctions against Russia will lead to an economic collapse in Africa which imports a huge amount of Russian wheat .” pic.twitter.com/D3TH7TIOAE—Althus (@golgoth51306) April 17, 2022 This tweet doesn’t existAs BBC reporters quickly noted, this tweet was never made by the British outlet. By checking the supposed date of the tweet, April 11 at 6:26 p.m., on the @BBCWorld account, we find no tweets this time, only one at 6:22 p.m. on the French presidential election. The photo visible in the tweet was used in an article published the same day earlier on the BBC’s Twitter account. The title of the article in English is: “French Elections: Macron Targets Le Pen as Second Round Begins,” and no mention of the refugee issue is visible in the article. The fake tweet was heavily relayed on the Telegram instant messaging app, notably on April 17, in a channel posing as a “Russian news aggregator that covers conflict/geopolitics and urgent news from around the world” (sic) . It had been viewed more than 130,000 times by April 18. It is, however, impossible to know the exact origin at this stage. Screenshot of a publication relayed on the Instagram group Intel Slavia Z regularly relaying false information on the war in Ukraine in particular. © Telegram / Intel Slavia Z “The likely target of this type of deception are users who only read the headlines”Olga Robinson is part of the BBC Monitoring team that fights misinformation, and who spotted the fake tweet. She explains: It is really difficult to reliably assess the number of accounts that have shared a post on Telegram and to find the source of an allegation on this platform, because journalists only have access to limited data. and can only search for content from channels they follow themselves or have found elsewhere. It is very likely that this post with a fake BBC tweet has circulated on posts that are not under our watch. The pattern of dissemination we observe is close to that of the fake BBC video accusing Ukraine of target Kramatorsk station [qui a circulé la semaine dernière, NDLR]. Within hours, the clip spread from anonymous Telegram channels to the Twitter feeds of some Russian officials as well as Russian state television. This was also the case in the wake of the Mariupol maternity hospital bombing when pro-Kremlin and pro-Russian accounts – acting almost in unison – spread false information about pregnant women injured in attack. While such content is fairly easy for journalists and fact-checkers to debunk, the likely target of this type of deception are users who only read headlines or share information impulsively, without checking them first. This is why it’s so important to pause before sharing anything on social media and verify the original source of any supposed allegations. Macron” on various search engines does not make it possible to find the origin of this statement attributed to Emmanuel Macron. We find it simply relayed from April 17 on Twitter, without any source. defend an “à la carte” solidarity mechanism to relieve the States of first entry, while forcing those who want to free themselves from it to make other financial or material efforts.