France's student protests have sparked a wave of misleading content online. A viral TikTok falsely claimed the French army had deployed an armoured vehicle against protesters, when it was actually returning to a nearby military base. Other posts recycle 2023 footage of retirement protests as current events, while an AI-generated image was falsely presented as showing a police officer being attacked.
Vedika Bahl examines how old, out-of-context and AI-generated content is fuelling misinformation. France's student protests continued on Thursday, blockading schools and marching through cities across the country against underfunding, poor school conditions and a lack of teachers. The demonstrations have been violent in places, with hundreds of students, law enforcement officers and teachers injured.
The violence has triggered discourse surrounding some protesters' use of violence, as well as accusations of heavy-handed riot police, as rights groups accuse them of using excessive force against children. But alongside the protests, a wave of misleading content has been circulating online, including claims that the French army has deployed armoured vehicles against students. One TikTok video, viewed more than 2 million times, appears to show an armoured vehicle driving past a group of protesting high school students.
Captioned: "They brought back the tank", the video prompted outrage among internet users who believed the army was being deployed to suppress the demonstrations. The FRANCE 24 Observers geolocated the footage to a car park opposite Bernard Palissy High School in Gien, central France. The location matches details visible in the video, including the school building, a dividing wall and a nearby house with several chimneys.
But if it's not linked to the student protests, why was a French army vehicle passing directly outside the school? Around 500 metres from the school's campus are the barracks of the 12th Equipment Support Base, a military unit responsible for maintaining armoured vehicles for the French army. The vehicle in the video was travelling back to the nearby barracks.
There is no evidence that it was deployed against the students or that its presence was connected to the demonstrations. The French Ministry of the Armed Forces confirmed this to FRANCE 24, describing the journey as a "routine journey with no connection to current events at the school". The misleading video is part of a broader wave of content circulating around the protests, including old footage, images taken out of context and AI-generated material.
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