Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Lying clickbait: Outrageous aircraft, freaky fish and other Photoshop fails

I’ve written previously about how clickbait purveyors occasionally use crazy Photoshopped images to promote their articles. Well, they’re up to their old tricks again.
In February, I wrote about how clickbait vendors try to pass off nutty pictures of fake airplanes as the real thing. (See “Fake airplane photos and other lying clickbait.”)
Here are some more recent examples.
The first two examples use Photoshopped images of Ukraine’s Antonov An-225 Mriya. (See articles about the plane by Fox News, AviationCV and Pix Grove.) The massive six-engine aircraft is a marvel and doesn’t need to be embellished with extra engines.
One altered photo showed the Antonov with at least 18 engines.
The first two photos below are of the real Antonov, followed by the clickbait phonies.





A third clickbait article, from Taboola (like the others), used an illustration of a fictional cargo drone by Canadian artist Mathieu Lamble. With the thumbnail-sized photo it’s hard to tell if it’s real or not. The article was titled “Russia’s new plane is straight out of a sci-fi movie.”



In May, I wrote about other clickbait articles that use Photoshopped photos of animals that make them look monstrous. (See “Lying clickbait: Photoshop fails.”)
Here are some more recent examples of this trend.
A clickbait article from Outbrain titled “You have to see these spiders: The largest spiders in the world” used a photo of a perhaps a 10-foot-long beast. It’s a piece of digital artwork created by Paul Santa Maria in 2011, according to Hoaxes.org.



An article from Taboola showed a lion preparing to pounce on a young boy. The photo is a fake created for the website Worth 1000. (See photo at top.)


Another photo created for Worth 1000 showed up in a clickbait article titled “30 most dangerous species found on the planet.” The Photoshopped art depicted a mutant fish with eyes on its side. The original, unaltered photo was taken by Maj-Britt Hoiaas Lassen.




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