Does a video show a large cruise ship abandoned in the desert by Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia? No, that's not true: No legitimate news organization has reported it, though a massive engineering feat such as this undertaken by a political leader would be newsworthy to local, national and world newsrooms. The video is AI-generated. Two clips showing…
Did Disney announce in December 2025 that it would offer $10 tickets to the Disney World theme park? No, that's not true: The claim originated from a website with a satire label. As of this writing, neither the Disney World website nor credible media said anything about a price that low. The claim came from a video (archived here) published…
Did Barbra Streisand just announce a massive donation while accepting a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at a Los Angeles gala in front of various tech titans, billionaires and powerful people? No, that's not true: The exact same story, often accompanied by an image or a mention of Mark Zuckerberg, has been posted about dozens of celebrities by a network of sites…
Did Cher, Patrick Mahomes, Bono and other celebrities pull business deals with Amazon over founder Jeff Bezos' "quiet alignment with Trump," sending messages to Bezos that all began "Wake up, Jeff"? No, that's not true: The posts tell nearly identical stories featuring those and dozens of other famous names all quitting Amazon. The clickbait fictions were published by a network…
Were President Donald Trump, former President Barack Obama or TV host Jimmy Kimmel silenced after calling Harvard grads "overrated and dumb" when opponents revealed their SAT scores? No, that's not true: There is no public record of Trump, Obama or Kimmel saying it. There is also no record of anyone confronting those men with their SAT scores. Facebook pages administered…
Did Austria reveal the stage design for Eurovision 2026 is a swastika? No, that's not true: The image is fake and was posted by a satire account which says they have been "Spreading misinformation on the internet since 1827". On Dec. 16, 2025 eurovision.com announced German stage designer Florian Wieder has envisioned a stage in the shape of a curved…
Did Rachel Maddow, tennis champion Coco Gauff and former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, plus dozens of other prominent Americans, post identical brave notes from a hospital bed, saying "I still have a long road ahead. But I believe in recovery -- through love, through support, and through everyone's thoughts and prayers."? No, that's not true: The stories, with identical…
Did the company behind the Roblox video game announce it is "shutting down on January 1st"? No, that's not true: A viral screenshot of such a message appeared on an account labeled "parody" on X. It did not come from the official company website and there were no news articles about any such shutdown. The image and claim appeared in…
Did Barack Obama, Donald Trump or Marco Rubio "just cut the ribbon on a $150 million free education and health campus, entirely funded "by his own pocket", without a single tax dollar."? No, none of them did: The made-up stories are among dozens cranked out by Vietnam-based publishers building traffic on Facebook with stories attractive to fans of Obama, Trump…
Is "Tech world on fire" over news that Elon Musk bought Facebook in order to "delete it"? No, that's not true: Meta (which owns Facebook) had not, as of this writing, announced or documented a sale, as is required of publicly traded companies. Lead Stories found no credible news reports of an impending sale to Musk. The site that generated…
Is a video of fresh produce being artificially painted in China real? No, that's not true: The clip originated from an account that labels its content as AI-generated. The video contained multiple inconsistencies strongly pointing to AI. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Instagram, where it was published on December 2, 2025. The caption read: chemical. This…
Was Megan Hollis, a waitress in Cleveland, Ohio, arrested for flipping a table after customers left a $5 tip on a $304 bill? No, that's not true: This is not a real story or a real mugshot. The post circulating on social media originated from an Instagram account that warns "This page features satire and parody stories that are exaggerated,…
Does a video show two big trucks hauling UFOs or bunkers over a bridge? No, that's not true: The convoy is carrying large industrial air-cooled heat exchangers, also called cooling fans. These induced draft heat exchangers are marked with a Fin-Fan logo, indicating they were manufactured by Hudson Products Corporation of Beasley, Texas. Fans like these may be used in…
Did Norway launch an autonomous ship, the BlueHarvester, which can clean plastic from the ocean and then turn that plastic into fuel it uses to power itself? No, that's not true: Images of the BlueHarvester are AI-generated. A search of the Norwegian Maritime Authority database for BlueHarvester finds there is no record of a vessel by this name. The description…
Did a real Domino's delivery rider in Japan carry a pepperoni pizza in an insulated backpack to the top of Mount Fuji? No, that's not true: An AI-generated photo and story circulating on social media are not real, but they are based on something that did happen and went viral with real photos. Umanami Futoshi is a Japanese office worker…
Does a video show a graveyard of green electric scooters that ran out of battery life and were abandoned because it is too expensive to replace them? No, that's not true: This video is real, but the reason the electric scooters were taken out of service had nothing to do with the batteries. Slowing demand for the bikes led the…
Is a high-end Seattle store called "Matthew's Haberdashery" moving to Charlotte, North Carolina and selling Seattle-made men's clothes at a discount in a moving sale? No, that's not true: the store never existed, and the website and Facebook page appeared just 39 days before the moving sale was underway. Lead Stories easily found the exact photos from the Matthew's website…
Does a viral video include real courthouse footage covering a $3 million lawsuit brought by the family of a man who died from electrocution while trying to steal "electric copper wire" from a vehicle charging station? No, that's not true: The shot purporting to show "Darius Johnson's" family was real, but was taken from the coverage of an unrelated case.…
Did President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy invest $500 million or $1.5 billion "of his own money" in "a ski resort in Western Ukraine"? No, that's not true: Social media posts misattribute publicly known investment amounts about such a project. Talking to Lead Stories, the project's developer denied not only Zelenskyy's participation but also the presence of any direct government funding.…
Is an image of a Walmart clearance sale on all Trump Merchandise for 99 cents in November 2025 real? No, that's not true: The photo includes a Gemini watermark in the lower-right corner, indicating it was created with Google's generative AI app. There are several misspellings on the merchandise that confirm it is fake, including a red MAGA hat that…
Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
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