I didn't get taken in by the fake video that is the subject of this article. I know enough about space science and Mars exploration that I'm pretty sure I'd have ignored it had I come across it. But I have gotten taken by stories on other subjects, so I'm quite aware of the problem of misinformation on the internet. Usually the subject is political or related to a hot-button scientific topic like COVID-19 or climate change. But until I read this article, I had no idea that there was so much crap floating around about Mars exploration.
@wonderofscienc, who imitate the account @wonderofscience, posted the video… while the “real” @wonderofscience posted a similar video around two weeks prior, but with full attribution — that the footage was from Curiosity and the sound from Insight. The imitator @wonderofscienc got less engagement than the well-attributed video from @wonderofscience, but it is also engaging in a strange form of identity theft, and one that is paying off a little — the fake Wonder of Science has more than 10,000 followers, which is only 1 percent or so the number of the real Wonder of Science (which, while often simply displaying images with a brief explanation, also source images and videos and occasionally provide link-backs.)
So, many of the accounts are on less than the up-and-up.
Often, Mack says, they’re accounts that have scraped images from Reddit and other sites, often removing attribution, and at times stitching together things that shouldn’t be there — adding lightning to a cloud formation over the Moon, or showing a misrepresented image of an eclipse. The accounts all chase one thing: virality.
It's sad that people will misrepresent what is one of the highest achievements of the human race to gain clicks (and maybe a few bucks) from social media.
Look for more on this subject in an upcoming post.
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