Altered Video of Greta Thunberg Advocating 'Vegan Grenades in Wars' Goes Viral
This video is a deepfake. The original video shows Thunberg talking about climate action and not wars.
Fact-check: This is an altered video of Greta Thunberg advocating 'vegan grenades and biodegradable missiles' in wars.
(Photo: The Quint)
A video showing Swedish environment activist Greta Thunberg talking about using 'vegan grenades and biodegradable missiles in wars' is going viral on social media.
An archive can be seen here.
(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)
Is this true?: No, this is an altered video.
The original interview of Thunberg shows her discussing the environmental measures she undertook during her childhood.
This deepfake video has been created using AI technology to show that she was advocating using "vegan weaponry" in wars.
How did we find out the truth?: We noticed 'BBC', 'SATIRE' and '@snicklink' on the corners of the viral video.
On performing a relevant keyword search, we found the source of the viral video.
This was shared by a user named 'Snicklink' on X (formerly Twitter) account on 20 October 2023.
The caption carried the hashtag 'satire'.
The post can be seen here.
We also found the original video of this interview shared by British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on their official YouTube channel.
This was shared on 1 November 2022 and was titled, "Greta Thunberg on how to tackle climate anxiety".
The viral part starts at 0:16 timestamp and shows Thunberg talking about how she started her journey of being environmentally conscious.
Nowhere in the interview does she talk about warfare, as claimed in the viral post.
She says, “When you are a child of eight, ten, or eleven, there is not much that you can do to make a big difference so you start small. I started with turning off the lights at home to save energy. And that led to other things. Eventually, I stopped flying, I became vegan and so on. I even got my parents to do that, too, because I started talking to them, and they started to listen to my concerns. Making them change, it also gave me the courage that I needed to move on and start school striking. So, starting somewhere or at home is really good."
Conclusion: This is an altered video of Greta Thunberg advocating 'vegan grenades and biodegradable missiles' in wars.
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