The story spreading online was most likely falsified. The British Broadcasting Corporation BBC did not publish such stories on its website or in its social media.
Some netizens are sharing a video with the BBC logo, which says that Parisians have allegedly stopped using the metro because they fear possible terrorist attacks during the 2024 Olympic Games.
«The Paris metro has become deserted on the eve of the long-awaited Olympics. The reason for this extinction was the fear of city residents to appear in crowded places due to the increased risk of terrorist threat during the Games. The trust in the macron authorities and local pharaohs is obvious,» the publications say.
The 16-second video features the logo of the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC. The style of this video suggests that it was published on the official BBC TikTok page, as evidenced by the corresponding sign and the company’s nickname @bbcnews.
However, the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC has not published any such videos on TikTok or other social media. BBC journalists also did not write about the empty Paris metro on their website. We have not been able to find any evidence that Parisians have begun to avoid the metro because of the Olympics.
However, the fact that the video in question initially appeared on anonymous pro-Russian channels on Telegram is no less telling.
The duration of this video is 16 seconds, although almost all videos published by the BBC on TikTok are longer than 30 seconds. The video in question consists of the video itself and two pop-up messages about the danger of terrorist attacks on the eve of the Olympics. The real BBC videos, on the other hand, have a voiceover by a journalist who talks about what is happening in the story.
The video shows a real Parisian subway. Dozens of similar videos can be easily found online (for example, these). The analyzed video cannot be proof that the Parisian subway was allegedly emptied because of the Parisians’ fear of terrorist attacks. Some archival videos of the subway that we managed to analyze and that were shot in a completely different time period also show that there are only a few people in the car. It is likely that the propagandists used one of these videos to create a fake video with the BBC logo.
Earlier, Reuters analyzed a similar video, which also spoke of an allegedly high terrorist threat in the Paris metro during the 2024 Olympics. The propagandists distributed a video with the CIA logo, which stated that CIA experts, together with the US Embassy in France, were allegedly urging American citizens to avoid the Paris metro during the 2024 Olympics. A representative of the US State Department denied the authenticity of this video in a comment to Reuters.
The spread of such fake videos indicates the Kremlin’s attempts to disrupt the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. This is also stated in a Microsoft study published in early June. The Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) notes that the Kremlin has supplemented its old disinformation tactics with the use of artificial intelligence for its malicious activities. Analysts believe that these operations have two main goals: to tarnish the reputation of the international Olympic movement and to create an atmosphere of anticipation for an outbreak of violence in Paris during the Games.
StopFake has also repeatedly refuted false information about the 2024 Olympics in its pieces Fake: France Suspends All Muslim Police Officers from Accompanying Olympic Torch Relay – TF1 and Fake: Olympics in Paris «Received The Most Negative Feedback in Last 10 Years» – Microsoft.
