Fake News: Picture Does NOT Show a Public Beach in China

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Picture Does NOT Show a Public Beach in China

Does a picture often shared on social media show a very crowded public beach in China? No, that's not true: the photo actually shows an aerial shot of Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro during the 2013 World Youth Day when Pope Francis celebrated mass there.

The photo recently went viral again via a post (archived here) on a Facebook page named "Pictures in History" where it was published on May 8, 2019 under the caption "A public beach in China. Wow!". It looked like this:

This is the picture in question:

notinchina.jpg

Media reports at the time clearly showed the crowding on the beach:

Pope's final World Youth Day mass draws large crowds in Rio

Hundreds of thousands sleep on Copacabana beach to celebrate mass with pope who is riding wave of popularity

Here are more pictures of the beach, you can recognize the white pointy tents, the blue tents and even the massive television screens:

Embed from Getty Images

So no, this is not China. Any page or website that tries to tell you that is attempting to fool you into clicking, liking or sharing things for their own benefit.


  Maarten Schenk

Maarten Schenk is the co-founder and COO/CTO of Lead Stories and an expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

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.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


WhatsApp Tipline

Have a tip or a question? Chat with our friendly robots on WhatsApp!

Add our number +1 (404) 655-4223, follow this link or scan the image below with your phone:

@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion