Video altered to depict people shooting at drone in New Jersey | Fact check
The claim: Video shows people shooting at drone over New Jersey
A Dec. 14 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows what appears to be gunfire directed at a distant object flying through the night sky.
“BREAKING: People Are Literally SHOOTING at the Drones in New Jersey Now,” the post's caption reads.
The video was shared more than 40 times in two weeks. Similar videos, sometimes with different audio, were also shared on Facebook and X.
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Our rating: Altered
The audio and gunshot visuals were added to a video posted online more than a week earlier. In the earlier iterations of the video, there is no gunfire directed toward the flying object.
Gunhshot effects, audio added to video
After more than a month of drone sightings across the Northeast, government and law enforcement officials have provided few answers. Officials have, however, warned civilians not to take matters into their own hands, as shooting down a drone is a federal crime.
The Facebook video makes it appear someone disregarded this warning. But the clip is altered.
The Facebook post uses footage from a video shared Dec. 4 on YouTube, depicting what appears to be a drone hovering over what the user said is southern New Jersey. The subsequent posts, coming more than a week later, are nearly identical but add visual and sound effects to make it appear as if gunshots were fired at the flying object. There are no gunshots fired in the earlier iterations of the video.
The bullets or projectiles in the Facebook video appear to pass through or near the flying object without affecting its flight, noted Walter Scheirer, a Notre Dame engineering professor whose area of research includes visual recognition.
“If this were a real video, those shots, even glancing ones, would have affected the drone in some way – this is frequently observed in footage of drones operating in Ukraine,” he told Paste BN in an email. “The altered video does not look plausible.”
Fact check: Drone video has been online since at least 2022, unrelated to US sightings
Paste BN could not reach the X user who shared the claim and did not receive responses after reaching out to the Facebook users who shared it.
Check Your Fact also debunked the claim.
Our fact-check sources
- Robert Earl White / ORDER OF LIGHT (YouTube), Dec. 4, MYSTERIOUS MILITARY DRONE CAPTURED ON VIDEO IN THE SOUTH PART OF NEW JERSEY NOW.
- Walter Scheirer, Dec. 30, Email exchange with Paste BN
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