By Daniel Adaji
A TikTok video has recently gained traction, alleging that Dubai encountered a significant flood on October 28, 2023. The video was widely shared on WhatsApp and originally posted by
@disaster513 on TikTok.
Dubai Flood 2023. The rich also cry. No Nation is perfect” it garnered 71 likes, 11 comments, and 31 shares, with reactions expressing sympathy, such as “very painful” by @FaithK Rose.
Claim: Heavy flood occurred in Dubai on 28 October 2023
Findings
NatureFact did some fact-checking and found that the claim about the Dubai flood video is false. Turns out, the viral video on TikTok and WhatsApp wasn’t even from Dubai or October 28, 2023. It was actually a computer-generated image (CGI) of the Burj Khalifa with an umbrella, created by UAE Forsan and posted on YouTube user, 10 months ago. People on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) shared it, falsely claiming it was from New York City or Hong Kong. NatureFact used Google Reverse Search and Invid to verify the video’s origin and authenticity. The video was manipulated using the standard JPEG library, which is commonly used by many devices and platforms.
NatureFact discovered that while there was indeed heavy rain in Dubai on October 26, 2023, the video that circulated earlier did not accurately depict the situation in Dubai during that time. After conducting a thorough verification process using tools like Google Reverse Search, it was found that the earliest version of the video was actually posted on TikTok on September 9, 2023, by a user named @user ERICSON1 with no comments.
the video was actually falsely claimed to be from New York City on X (formerly Twitter) by @L_O_R_N_A1984 on September 30, 2023, at 1:45 PM. It received quite a bit of attention with 9754 views, 20 comments, 73 retweets, 112 likes, and 2 bookmarks. But then, another TikTok post by by drenarddgray, Israelite Business, claimed that it happened in Hong Kong on September 9, 2023. Quite a whirlwind of misinformation,
The Google Reverse Image search revealed that another key frame of the video was shared about 10 months ago with the caption “A CGI of Burj Khalifa shattering from rain with an umbrella.” It was posted by UAE Forsan on YouTube and had around 2.6k views at that time. Invid analysis also showed a high level of fusion in the video, and forensic analysis suggests that the images were generated using the standard JPEG library, which is commonly used by smartphones, GIMP, Microsoft Paint, and various social media platforms.
Verdict: Misleading.
The video was manipulated, not recent and used out of context.