Does a video on Threads show drones over the United States in 2024? No, that's not true: The video predates the 2024 wave of drone sighting reports. The clip has been online since at least 2022.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads on December 17, 2024. It said:
Its conspiracy Tuesday what yall thinking?
A banner placed on top of the video continued:
So the drones aren't just in NJ. There's
reports in TX and Oregon as well. Now I'm
hearing that they're spraying stuff. Any
labs out there feel like grabbing a sample
with SUMMA air sampling canisters?
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Wed Dec 18 21:20:43 2024 UTC)
In December 2024, reports about supposed drone sightings made the news (archived here). But the clip reviewed in this fact check had nothing to do with that.
The video contained a watermark displaying the name of a TikTok account. That account published the same clip on November 28, 2022 (archived here).
On the same day, the video also appeared on YouTube (archived here):
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Wed Dec 18 21:46:54 2024 UTC)
In 2020, Chinese state-controlled media wrote (archived here) that drones were used for spraying disinfectant in public places during the COVID-19 outbreak. Lead Stories was unable to establish what substance appeared to have been sprayed in the clip.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims mentioning drones can be found here.
