YELLOW VESTS FLOODEDBY FAKE NEWSOVER 100M VIEWS OF
DISINFORMATION ON FACEBOOK
Avaaz calls on Facebook to Correct the Record
ahead of EU Elections -- with an in-depth
study showing how fake news surrounding the
Yellow Vests reached over 100 million views,
and how Russia fueled the divide.
15/03/2019 - Avaaz Report
Version 1.2

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YELLOW VESTS FLOODED BY FAKE NEWSOVER 100M VIEWS OF DISINFORMATION ON FACEBOOK
Avaaz calls on Facebook to Correct the Record ahead of EU Elections -with an in-depth study showing how fake news surrounding the Yellow
Vests reached over 100 million views, and how Russia fueled the divide.

15/03/2019

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CONTENTS

31) The Summary - What the study shows42) The Data - 105M views of fake news

53) The Stories - 6 case studies

74) The Methodology - How the study was done

145) The Russia Effect - RT France dominates the YouTube debate

166) The Solution - Correct The Record

22

Annex - 100 Fake News Table

27

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THE SUMMARY WHAT THE STUDY SHOWSThis new in-depth study by the global citizens’
movement Avaaz shows for the first time theunprecedented scale at which the Yellow Vest
movement has been impacted by disinformation.
According to its findings, fake news surrounding
the French Yellow Vest movement has reached an
estimated 105 million views on Facebook alone, in acountry with just over 35 million Facebook monthly
active users1.
The research analyzed social media posts over a fivemonth period - between November 2018 and March
2019 - and focused mainly on Facebook, where mostof the Yellow Vest social media interaction took
place. It took into account the top known 100 fakenews stories circulating in the French Yellow Vest
movement, all of which were fact-checked by Frenchor international media. The selected stories aremostly malicious, made-up, purposefully misleadingor factually incorrect posts. Furthermore, thefindings shine a light on the increased efforts from
Russian state media, RT France, to fuel the protests.
The research was carried out by a team ofinvestigative reporters, researchers and data
analysts set up by the global citizens movement
Avaaz to detect and deter disinformation aheadof the European elections. It shows clearly that
Facebook and other platforms’ responses todisinformation in Europe are ineffective and posea serious threat to healthy public discourse anddemocratic stability, especially in light of upcoming
EU elections in May. The report concludes bycalling on platforms to work with fact-checkers to
Correct The Record for everyone exposed to false
or misleading content, as an emergency measure
ahead of the elections.

The study shows:
JJ Disinformation in Yellow Vest Facebook
groups and pages reached over 105 million
views and over 4 million shares in the time
between November 1, 2018 and March 6, 2019.
JJ The 100 most viewed fake news stories
analyzed in this report include:• a post with images including bleeding‘Yellow Vest protesters,’ which media andgovernment allegedly hid from the public- when some of the photos were actuallytaken at different protests near Madrid orin Catalonia (136,818 shares, 3,511,456 est.
views)• a video of French President Macron
dancing in the Middle East “while France
suffers,” when the video was actually takenover a month before, during the Summit
for the Francophonie in Armenia (183,390
shares, 5,700,000 views)• an image of a Yellow Vest protest in Paris,
with a caption alleging that the image had
been censored on Facebook or elsewhere;
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Le Monde fact-checkers debunked the claimthat the photo or the caption were deleted(349,403 shares, 8,967,432 est. views)
JJ RT France’s overwhelming dominance of
the French debate about the Yellow Vests
on YouTube: Research focusing on the 500
top YouTube results shows that Russia’s
state media was the most viewed channel forvideos related to the Yellow Vest movement inFrance. Moreover, when taking into account all
videos related to Yellow Vests (as measured bywhether the term yellow vests was mentioned
in either the video title or description), RT
France accumulated more views than Le
Monde, L’Obs, Le Huffington Post, Le Figaro
and FRANCE 24 combined (30M compared to
24M).
JJ How Avaaz’s policy proposal “Correct the
Record” could function as a deterrence forfar-spreading fake news, by requiring that
Facebook and other platforms work with factcheckers to issue corrections to all users who
have been exposed to disinformation.

https://www.lejdd.fr/Medias/Internet/il-y-a-plus-de-35-millions-dutilisateurs-de-facebook-en-france-3850928

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THE DATA - 105M VIEWS OF FAKE NEWSThe key focus of the study is the world’s biggest
social media platform Facebook, by far the mostpopular online network used by the Yellow Vest
movement2. We examined posts shared by pages,
groups and profiles associated with the movement
and limited our analysis to posts containing text,
images, and videos.

Table 2.1 below shows the 20 most viewed fakenews stories for the period between November
1, 2018 and March 6, 2019. Figure 2.2 shows all
100 most viewed fake news as an infographic,
segmented by topic. The entire list of the 100 mostviewed fake news can be found in the Annex. As
stated above, all of the analyzed fake news havebeen fact-checked by French or international media.

Table 2.1 -- 20 Most Viewed Fake News Content, Nov. 1, 2018 - Mar. 6, 2019

NAME OF VIDEO

VIEWS SHARESYellow Vests protest picture being deliberately deleted by Facebook

8,967,432

Fake Gerard Lanvin letter

FAKE NEWSFACT-CHECK

349,401https://www.facebook.com/groups/1136704289828258/
permalink/1144241582407862

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A66kHxLLAA5l1J0-d_ybpr074KJWU8o/view?usp=sharing

6,467,620

252,000

https://web.archive.org/web/20181210110228/facebook.com/
photo.php?fbid=10217401146005830&set=a.10201689078253956&type=3&theaterhttps://factuel.afp.com/non-gerard-lanvin-nest-pas-lauteur-dunelettre-ouverte-anti-macron-tres-virale-sur-facebook

Macron dances while France is protesting

5,700,000

183,392

https://www.facebook.com/pat51343/videos/vb.100007099055800/2072455656334383/?type=2&video_
source=user_video_tab

https://observers.france24.com/fr/20181203-emmanuel-macrondanse-il-alors-mouvement-gilets-jaunes-debute

Macron dances while France is protesting (2nd post)

4,944,624

192,659https://www.facebook.com/yann.juarez/posts/2850952611587557

https://twitter.com/AfpFactuel/status/1066992424361312256

Police allegedly supporting Yellow Vest protesters

4,619,857

180,005

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1969051696548925&set=
pb.100003323406258.-2207520000.1544447688.&type=3&theaterhttps://twitter.com/AfpFactuel/status/1066818934664511489

Fake police violence pictures

3,511,456

136,818

https://www.facebook.com/snoirotetthielen/posts/1971636099572802

https://observers.france24.com/en/20181129-debunked-videosyellow-vests-france-protests

Video of police officers taking off their helmets - Montpellier

4,468,048

174,090https://www.facebook.com/groups/283520695621830/
permalink/293590931281473

https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/occitanie/herault/montpellier/herault-melenchon-victime-infox-confond-frontignan-bordeaux-chaleur-soutien-1579669.html

Disobedience call from an alleged policeman

3,900,000

248,867https://www.facebook.com/djohn.attend.5/
videos/2139730536342642/

https://www.20minutes.fr/societe/2382079-20181128-video-giletsjaunes-policier-vraiment-publie-videos-soutien-mouvement

Outdated police violences and allegedly being erased

3,516,127

137,000(need to be a member of the group to see the post)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/298362254331895/
permalink/317972172370903

from an old 2016 video: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=qNvdpPHzniYFrance 3 TV intentionally censoring journalist

3,700,000

119,059https://www.facebook.com/Bassiste.de.Fanatic.Control/videos/vb.1234098273/10217681408767031/?type=2&theaterhttps://factuel.afp.com/gilets-jaunes-demeler-le-vrai-du-faux-de-troisjours-de-mobilisation-0

Police beating students (outdated)

3,600,000

161,862https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=348619922581785

https://factuel.afp.com/hors-contexte-anciennes-ou-faussementlegendeestoutes-les-images-de-violences-en-marge-du-mouvement

Macron hired mercenaries; secret services support Yellow Vest protests

3,500,000

135,169https://www.facebook.com/nicole.guegan.735/
videos/2709389059285694/

http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/gilets-jaunes-lesmercenaires-de-macron-et-autres-intox-qui-pullulent-surfacebook-05-12-2018-7961382.php

Police officers taking off their helmets - Bordeaux

3,300,000

121,983https://www.facebook.com/benjamin.e.dupouy/
videos/10218125252782142/

https://factuel.afp.com/la-police-bordeaux-retire-son-casque-ensoutien-aux-gilets-jaunes-une-interpretation-douteuse

UN is planning the replacement of European population by migrants

2,000,000

72,457https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=361553517934236

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/12/06/vendre-lafrance-a-l-onu-de-donald-trump-aux-gilets-jaunes-l-itineraire-mondiald-une-intox_5393268_4355770.html

Marrakech Pact conspiracy

3,100,000

108,617

https://www.facebook.com/romeo.piacquaddio/
videos/1430180387116830/

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/12/06/vendre-lafrance-a-l-onu-de-donald-trump-aux-gilets-jaunes-l-itineraire-mondiald-une-intox_5393268_4355770.html

Untrue claim that French MPs salary higher than in Germany

2,406,288

93,757https://www.facebook.com/groups/310403819778193/
permalink/342917016526873

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2016/12/30/quelspays-europeens-remunerent-le-mieux-leurs-elus_5055895_4355770.
html

Picture of rugby supporters used for illustrating YV protest

2,277,655

88,745post has been deleted but screenshot shared here by AFP on twitter:
https://twitter.com/AfpFactuel/status/1064287475886112768/photo/1

https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/fausse-video-del-agression-d-un-handicape-a-quimper-le-prefet-du-finistere-porteplainte-1542826305

Croatia president giving up her presidential plane

1,918,240

74,741

https://www.facebook.com/groups/310403819778193/
permalink/332905080861400

https://factuel.afp.com/non-la-presidente-croate-na-pas-vendu-lavionpresidentiel-et-baisse-son-salaire-de-30

Police intentionally throwing a grenade at a protester

1,600,000

57,807https://www.facebook.com/gjpourlepeuple/
videos/290734811786372/

https://factuel.afp.com/des-policiers-visent-deliberement-ce-giletjaune-avec-une-grenade-la-police-et-le-manifestant-ne1

5

https://jean-jaures.org/nos-productions/en-immersion-numerique-avec-les-gilets-jaunes

Figure 2.2 -- Top 100 most viewed fake news by topic, Nov. 1, 2018 - Mar. 6, 2019

FAKE NEWS AND THE
FRENCH YELLOW VESTSEach circle is one piece of “fake news” size is equal to the total number of
estimated views

Fake Gerard Lanvin letter

Facebook “censors”
a Yellow Vests picture

Fake pictures ofpolice violence

Fake photo of police support
for the Yellow Vests

Figure 2.3 -- Views of the top 100 fake news by topic, Nov. 1, 2018 - Mar. 6, 2019

FRENCH YELLOW VEST
FAKE NEWS DATABASE BY
ESTIMATED VIEWS AND TYPE
Each circle represents one piece of fake news labeled by
keywords; filtered to show content with >2,500,000 views

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THE STORIES 6 CASE STUDIESThis chapter presents brief case studies of someof the most shared and viewed fake news fromour research3. Every item has a summary of the
fake news, its reach and verification of the events
depicted by the posts.

POLICE BRUTALITY, CONTEXT MANIPULATIONPOLICE BRUTALITY AT YELLOW VEST PROTEST LEAVES PEOPLE BLEEDING
FAKE NEWS: A Yellow Vest supporter shareda collection of images of people, supposedly
showing them as Yellow Vest protesters who are
victims of French police brutality, with a captionthat reads “the media and the government ofMacron have hidden the images of peacefulprotesters beaten by the CRS” (the general reserveof the French National Police).
REACH: The post quickly went viral on Facebook
and reached 136K shares and over 3.5M
estimated views by March 6, 2019.
VERIFICATION: The post was made up of several
photos taken at different protests, cities, countries
and events around the world, yet suggested
they were all the result of French police brutality
toward the Yellow Vest movement. For instance,
the image of the young woman bleeding was froma Coal Mining protest in Spain back in July 11,
2012. The one from the older woman bleeding was
taken at a Catalonian protest on September 11,
2017.
Facebook has recently added below the post
related content articles from Observers France 24
and AFP that explain the misuse of such images.

3 Screenshots were taken November 2018 - March 2019.

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Below are two examples of where some of the images originally came from:“Miners clash with police while demonstrating in Madrid.”
This Getty Images caption shows that the photo was
actually taken near Madrid, Spain on July 11, 2012.

This AFP Factuel post reads, “The third image of anolder lady with a bloodied face has been sharedaround social networks during the autumn 2017
Catalan referendum.”

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ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT, CONTEXT AND DATE MANIPULATION

MACRON DANCES WHILE FRANCE SUFFERS
FAKE NEWS: This video was posted on Facebook
on November 17, 2018, the day the first Yellow
Vests protests happened. The video depicts
President Macron and his wife dancing to Middle
Eastern-sounding music at a gala event with thecaption, “And while France is suffering,” insinuating
Macron was “partying” while French citizens were
protesting.
REACH: The video went viral within days, reaching
5.7M views and over 183K shares by March 6,
2019.
VERIFICATION: The original video was publisheda month before the first Yellow Vest protests
happened, on October 11. It was recorded
during the International Organization of theFrancophonie summit in Armenia. Media
outlets published several articles explaining
the manipulation of dates and context. At timeof publication, Facebook still had not issued arelated article below the video or provided further
information.

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CENSORSHIPTHE YELLOW VEST MOVEMENT IS BEING CENSORED
FAKE NEWS: This post was published on November
25, 2018, with the caption “this picture has justbeen erased, share massively,” insinuating that thecontent had been censored.
REACH: When first published with the censorship
accusations, massive sharing started and by March
6, 2019, it reached over 349K shares, leading to over
8.9M estimated views. The image, with the false
caption, was still available at the close of this study.

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VERIFICATION: The post is still available on theplatform and as fact-checkers from Le Monde have
said, “this image taken by photographer Olivier Coret
has been used to illustrate many online publications
that have not been censored on Facebook orelsewhere. [...] the very fact that this photo was
published on November 25 and is still available […]proves that there was no censorship.”4

CONSPIRACY THEORY, POLITICAL NEWS MANIPULATION

MACRON IS SELLING FRANCE AFTER SIGNING THE MARRAKECH PACT
FAKE NEWS: A man named Romeo Piacquaddio
recorded himself in early December 2018
describing an extremely important message hereceived on his phone. He plays the audio of anunidentified woman warning that Macron wasgoing to “sell France by signing the UN migration
pact on December 10.” The female voice thenclaimed that after signing this treaty, Macron
would resign and that the Yellow Vest movement
would be used as a cover up.
REACH: The video was shared 108K times andreached over 3.1M views by March 6, 2019.
Disinformation about the Marrakech UN Migration
Pact, warning of alarming mass migration into
France, was shared across multiple Yellow Vest
groups, including by Maxime Nicolle, one of theleaders of the movement.
VERIFICATION: Articles by multiple newspapers,such as Le Monde, have since refuted claims
that the treaty would lead to open borders orthat countries would be forced to change theirmigration policies. The controversy started
spreading in France in early 2018 when extreme
right pages such as Breiz Atao and Polémia begansharing the content. By late November, the topic
became popular in the Yellow Vest groups.

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ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT SUPPORTED BY PUBLIC FIGURESGERARD LANVIN, A FAMOUS FRENCH ACTOR, PUBLISHED AN
OPEN LETTER AGAINST MACRON AND HIS GOVERNMENT

FAKE NEWS: On December 8, 2018 a letter allegedly
written by French actor Gérard Lanvin, criticizing
President Macron and his government, was sharedwidely on social media. It strongly condemned
public officials as well, saying that people who “frombirth to death live off of public funds, enjoy specialsocial security benefits and are exempt from taxes,
should at least have the decency of not talking about
equality.”
REACH: In less than 48 hours, this post was sharedover 251K with over 6.4M estimated views. The
same post, or similar variations, were shared on
different pages and groups on Facebook (seescreenshot at right).
VERIFICATION: The letter shared was not written
by Gérard Lanvin. The actor claimed he was a victim
of identity theft and has since reported the incident
to the authorities. The fake news took excerpts of areal letter published in 2013 by the actor, originallyaddressed to then President François Hollande,around a controversial income tax for wealthier12

people. The first post spreading the disinformation
has been removed by Facebook, but variations of
the same content (1, 2, 3) can still be found without
any alert from the platform.

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POLICE BRUTALITY AND ANTI-ESTABLISHMENTA MOTHER IN THE NETHERLANDS IS ARRESTED BECAUSESHE REFUSED TO TAKE OFF HER YELLOW VEST.

FAKE NEWS: The video was first shared by “Pegida
Nederland.” It was filmed in the Netherlands and thecaption suggests that the police arrested a lady witha stroller because she refused to remove the yellow
vest.
REACH: The video was quickly translated to French,
English and Italian. The English version alone
received 31K shares, and an estimated 1.3M views,
by March 6, 2019. Many comments expressed
outrage over the perceived police brutality directed
toward a woman with a child, and interpreted theincident as an attack on freedom of expression.
VERIFICATION: According to AFP, the woman in
the video had raised the suspicion of police forces
because she was walking with a doll in a stroller, notwith a baby, and once she wasn’t able to prove her
identity, she was detained, which is in accordance toDutch law.

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THE METHODOLOGY
Facebook has long been criticized for the lack of transparency it provides to factcheckers, governments, media and the wider public about the spread of content.
However, Avaaz’s team of data scientists and researchers used a combination ofFacebook’s public data, analytics tools like CrowdTangle, fact-checks by French andinternational media and statistical modeling to arrive at what we believe provides acredible and conservative picture of the reach and impact these fake news stories
have had in France.
JJ TIME FRAME: The first national Yellow Vest movement demonstration was on
November 17, 2018. However, many of the Facebook groups and pages at the core of
the movement were created weeks earlier. For this reason, we focused our Facebook
research on content created between November 1, 2018 and March 6, 2019.
JJ SCOPE: A number of analyses and media reports have shown strong evidence that
Facebook was by far the most popular social media platform used by the Yellow Vest
movement participants. We examined social media posts shared by pages, groups andprofiles associated with the movement and limited our analysis to posts containing
text, images and videos while excluding links to outside content.
JJ TOTAL NUMBER OF FAKE NEWS VETTED, SHARES, AND VIEWS:

FAKE NEWS POSTSSHARES

VIEWS

VIDEOS

37

1,666,743

42,777,224

IMAGES & TEXT

63

2,438,894

62,594,602 (est.)

TOTAL

100

4,105,637

105,371,826 (est.)

JJ FAKE NEWS SOURCES AND SELECTION CRITERIA: We used three different strategies
to identify the fake news for our analysis: a) We collected all the Yellow Vest-related
fake news reported by the main fact-checking websites in France (including but notlimited to: AFP Factuel, 20 Minutes, Les Décodeurs and Checknews); b) Using theanalytics tool CrowdTangle, we selected 198 public groups and pages used by the
Yellow Vest movement and scrutinized their posts to identify fake news; and c) We
added the fake news from Le Monde’s own research based on another group of 204
Yellow Vest Facebook groups from October 31 to January 22. Out of those, we selected
the 100 most shared posts among the fake news we had identified.
JJ CATEGORIES OF FAKE NEWS INCLUDED IN THE STUDY: We included in ourstudy content that falls within the definition of disinformation as articulated by the
EU Code of Practice on Disinformation: “verifiably false or misleading information
which, cumulatively, (a) ‘Is created, presented and disseminated for economic gain or tointentionally deceive the public’; and (b) ‘may cause public harm’, intended as ‘threats
to democratic political and policymaking processes as well as public goods such as theprotection of EU citizens’ health, the environment or security.”

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The 100 fake news stories we selected are mostly malicious, made up or factually
incorrect posts. But they also include purposefully misleading content that iseither out of date, is taken out of context, or its content is regarded as either
factually uncertain and at least partially inaccurate. As stated above, all of them
have been fact-checked by French or international media.
JJ VIEWERSHIP CALCULATION FOR FAKE NEWS VIDEOS: Our fake news selection
contained 37 examples of fake news video content accumulating to a total of
42,777,224 views and 1,666,743 shares. We followed Facebook’s definition of what
constitutes a “view,” that is, a viewing experience that lasts 3 seconds or longer4.
JJ VIEWERSHIP ESTIMATION FOR IMAGES AND TEXT: Facebook discloses thenumber of views for videos, but for posts containing only text and image content
the platform displays only the number of shares and other interactions, such as
likes or comments. Therefore, in order to estimate viewership for text and image
content we designed a metric based on the publicly available statistics of theFacebook videos analyzed in our study, taking into account the total number ofvideo views and dividing it by the total number of video shares. Facebook reports
a “video view” only after 3 seconds, while an image or text can be considered as“viewed” and having an actual impact in less than 3 seconds (e.g. just scrolling by
an image of a bleeding woman, police brutality or claims of censorship). Therefore,
the estimation of total views in this study is very likely lower than the actual total
viewership of all content and therefore is to be seen as a conservative figure.
JJ ENGAGEMENT RATE CALCULATION FOR IMAGES AND TEXT: As laid out above,the metric to estimate the views of images and text is based on the “average
Yellow Vest fake viral content engagement rate” (from now just “YV engagement
rate,” with YV standing for Yellow Vests), which is calculated by using the available
video data with the following formula:
YV engagement rate = (YV video views/YV video shares)
Based on the 37 fake news videos in our database, the average YV engagement rate is:42,777,224 video views / 1,666,743 video shares = 25.6651589 views/share
The average YV engagement rate is then multiplied for the number of shares of
posts for which views are not provided by Facebook (containing images and text).
YV engagement rate * YV image and text shares = estimated YV image and text views
The total number of estimated views for posts containing images and text are:25.6651589 views/share * 2,438,894 shares = 62,594,602 total estimated views
Therefore, the total number of views ( video views + estimated views for image and text) is:
62,594,602 video views + 42,777,224 est. image and text views = 105,371,826 est. views
All the posts mentioned in this research were active and available as of March 6,
2019 or screenshots of the original posts together with data on shares and views
were provided and can be found in the annex.

415

https://www.facebook.com/business/news/Coming-Soon-Video-Metrics

5

THE RUSSIA EFFECT - RT FRANCEDOMINATES THE YOUTUBE DEBATE

A second part of the report focused on YouTube, andtwo datasets were analyzed.
The first one looked at the 500 most relevant Yellow
Vest videos after September 2018 according to theYouTube algorithm when running a search query for“Gilets Jaunes” both for the French language and for the
French region code. Although this dataset only allows
a partial picture of total views for each channel, being
based only on the top 500 videos, it allows us to assess
the biggest channels producing the most relevant Yellow
Vest content and their relative strength on YouTube.
The second dataset was obtained by querying RT
France’s channel and other mainstream media channels- Le Monde, L’Obs, FRANCE 24, Le Figaro, LeHuffPost using the YouTube API, and filtering the data to retain
only videos uploaded after September 2018. We thenused string detection to find mentions of Gilets Jaunes(or variations of it) either in the title or the descriptionof the video. This method provides a more precise
comparison of their viewerships.
The results from both datasets are overwhelmingly
clear: RT France is the most viewed channel onvideos related to the Yellow Vests in France andaccumulated more views (30M) than Le Monde,
L’Obs, FRANCE 24, Le Figaro, LeHuffPost combined(24M).
According to the US Director of National Intelligence, RT(Russia Today) is “the Kremlin’s principal international
propaganda outlet” and “contributed to the influence
campaign” of the 2016 US elections5. In the US, RT
has been suspended by Twitter from ad-buying in thefall-out from the US elections due to their clear bias6.
YouTube rolled out a feature in the US in 2018 informing
users if they’re watching a video from an organizationthat receives funding from a government. At the closeof this study, we have not found that such notifications
were shown to YouTube users in Europe, nor do wehave indications that this will be implemented in Europe
ahead of the EU elections in May7.

165

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

6

https://www.npr.org/2017/10/26/560199026/twitterends-russian-state-media-advertisements-citing-2016interference-efforts?t=1552208868105

7

https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/02/
greater-transparency-for-users-around.html

Figure 5.1 -- Top 20 channels publishing Yellow Vest content, ordered by number of views
and based on the 500 most relevant Yellow Vest videos, Nov. 1, 2018 - Mar. 7, 2019

FRENCH YOUTUBE CHANNELS WITH THE
HIGHEST NUMBER OF VIEWS
Based on the 500 most relevant videos for the search query “Gilet Jaune”

Another observation from Figure 5.1, is that alternative media, YouTuber and citizen
journalists, including a few channels featuring conspiracy theories, have more
visibility on YouTube than most of the traditional media, many of which are not evenfeatured in the top 20.

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RT France’s dominance is even more clear when looking at the number of videos
uploaded on Yellow Vests. Among the top 500 YouTube results, the Russian state
media has 3 times more videos (101) than the second biggest publisher (LeMedia - 30) and more than the next 7 channels cumulatively (100).

Figure 5.2 -- Top 20 channels publishing Yellow Vest content, ordered by number ofvideos uploaded and based on the 500 most relevant Yellow Vest videos, Nov. 11, 2018
- Mar. 7, 2019

FRENCH YOUTUBE CHANNELS WITH THE
HIGHEST NUMBER OF UPLOADED VIDEOS

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As mentioned above, to further study RT France’s content and publishing
behavior, we queried RT France’s YouTube channel using the YouTube API. The
original dataset contained 17,340 observations (videos) between September 2014
and March 2019. As a first step, we filtered the data to retain only observations
uploaded after September 2018.
This second dataset strengthens our analysis. 18 out of the 20 most viewed
videos on RT France’s YouTube channel since September 2018 are about the
Yellow Vests. The following graph shows these top 20 videos by view count. Theorange bars are Yellow Vest-related videos.
Figure 5.3 -- Top 20 RT France’s videos by view count Sep. 1, 2018 - Mar. 6, 201918 OUT OF 20 OF RT FRANCE’S MOST VIEWEDYOUTUBE VIDEOS ARE ABOUT THE YELLOW VESTSTop 20 videos by view count since September 201819

RT France has massively invested in coverage of the Yellow Vest protests, including
hour-long live coverage videos, and as a result, dominated the debate about
Yellow Vests on YouTube in France more than any other YouTube channel, letalone mainstream media. RT has permeated the movement to the extent that
protesters at one point chanted “Thank You, RT! Thank You, RT!” which the global
RT network posted directly onto their YouTube channel.

To assess the full reach of RT France on YouTube, we compared the channel’s
total views with those of the the largest mainstream media in France by retrieving
all videos about the Yellow Vests since September 2018 from the YouTube
channels of LeMonde, L’Obs and LeHuffPost (all of which were present in the
top 20 channels of the first data set). In addition, we retrieved videos from two
more channels which are among the most well-known and highest-circulation
media, France 24 and Le Figaro. On all of those videos we applied the same string
detection method used for RT France to identify videos about the Yellow Vests.
The results show that on YouTube, the information diet is not mainly made up
of quality journalism from within France - but by Russian state media and lots offringe actors (see initial analysis on 500 most relevant videos):• RT France has accumulated more views (30M) than Le Monde, L’Obs, FRANCE
24, Le Figaro and LeHuffPost combined (24M)• RT France has also uploaded 164% as many videos (1034) than Le Monde,
L’Obs, FRANCE 24, Le Figaro and LeHuffPost combined (629)20

RT FRANCE’S VIDEOS ABOUT THE YELLOW VESTSMARSHALED THE MOST VIEWS
Based on each channel’s videos published since September 2018

YOUTUBE CHANNELUPLOADED VIDEOSTOTAL VIEWS

RT France

1034

30243048

RT France Total

1034

30243048

LeHuffPost

145

7720720

L’Obs

107

5927921

Le Monde

264547978

FRANCE 24263

3544331

Le Figaro

882263770

Mainstream 5 Total

629

24004720

164%

126%

RT France / Mainstream 5

Note: The difference in the total views for RT France from the first dataset (13M views)
and the second dataset (30M views) derives from the fact that the first dataset lookedat the 500 most relevant YouTube Videos on Yellow Vests in France, and thus only
taking into account 101 videos from RT France, arriving at 13M views within the top
500 search queries from September 2018 to March 2019. The second dataset queried
the entire RT France YouTube channels and retrieved a total of 1034 videos for thequery “Gilets jaunes”, arriving at a total of 30M views since September 2018.

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6

THE SOLUTION:

CORRECTTHE RECORD.
Avaaz believes that the fake news surrounding the
Yellow Vests has been especially impactful, because
the vast majority of millions of French citizens
exposed to it have never been informed if they
have seen fake news, or seen factual corrections.
Because even if content is fact-checked and foundto be untrue, Facebook only shows what they call“related articles” to a very small percentage of theusers who have actually seen the fake news (mostly
people who shared or want to share the content).
But the solution to this problem is simple:
Platforms must themselves work with factcheckers to “Correct the Record” by distributing
independent third party corrections to EVERYSINGLE person who saw the false informationin the first place. Newspapers publish corrections
on their own pages, television stations on their own
airwaves; platforms should do the same on theirown channels. No one else can do it.
Avaaz believes that Correct the Record is likely themost powerful action platforms can take ahead of
the upcoming EU elections to restore the public’s
trust and to ensure the integrity of the elections.
It has been portrayed as a “radical new proposal[that] could curb fake news on social media” by
TIME magazine.
Governments protect consumers and participantsin financial and energy markets from false andmisleading information, including by making it
possible to issue corrections when disinformation
could influence people’s decisions. We should
offer our democracies the same protections weoffer our markets.

22

In our view,
Correct the Record would bea five-step process:1. DEFINE: The obligation to correct the record
would be activated when•

Independent fact-checkers verify that
content is false or misleading;•A significant number of people, e.g.
10,000, viewed the content.

2. DETECT: platforms must•

Deploy an accessible and prominentmechanism for users to reportdisinformation;•

Provide independent fact-checkers withaccess to content that has reached e.g.
10,000 or more people.

3. VERIFY: Platforms must work withindependent, third-party, verified factcheckers to determine whether reported
content is disinformation within 24 hours.
4. ALERT: Each user exposed to verified
disinformation should be notified immediately
using the platform’s most visible notification
standard.
5. CORRECT: Each user exposed todisinformation should receive a correction thatis of at least equal prominence to the originalcontent and that follows best practices, which
could include:•

Offering reasoned alternative
explanation, keeping the user’s worldview
in mind;•

Emphasizing factual information while
avoiding, whenever possible, repeating
the original misinformation;•

Citing endorsement by sources the user
is likely to trust.

Corrections work:
Multiple peer-reviewed studies
have demonstrated that effective
corrections can reduce andeven eliminate the effects ofdisinformation. Additional studies
disproved the theory of the “backfire
effect,” showed that corrections do
not entrench false beliefs and cameto the conclusion that corrections
work. Meanwhile, researchers areconverging on best practices for
effective corrections like emphasizing
factual information while avoiding,whenever possible, repeating theoriginal misinformation.

To the right is a mock up suggestionof what the corrections could look
like on users’ timelines:

23

UPDATES, VERSION 1.2
Version 1.2 of this report includes an
updated and more precise methodology
for the second part of the Youtube
investigation.
In the previous version We reported thatRT accumulated twice as many viewson videos related to the gilet jaunes
on YouTube as the top 5 French media
outlets combined. This was accurate
based on a search of videos that had“Gilet” (and variations of it, e.g. Gilet, Gilet
jaunes, Gilets jaunes) in the title. Yet, theway we conducted the string detection
only caught videos that had the word
“Gilet” written in uppercase letters, notlowercase (e.g. gilet, gilet jaunes, gilet
jaunes) nor occurences in the video
description. Updating our methodology
to both include lowercase versions of“gilet” and including the description of thevideo, the ratio of RT videos to the top 5
French outlets on YouTube drops from
213% to 126% - meaning that RT France
still has accumulated more videos views
than LeMonde, France24, L’Obs, LeHuffPo
and Le Figaro combined.
There is an even more comprehensive
approach that would manually review all
videos for gilet jaunes content but we do
not plan to pursue this.

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz is a global citizens movement with over
50 million supporters in every country of theworld, including about 20 million members
in Europe. The research for this study was
carried out by a team of investigative reporters,
researchers, and data analysts set up by Avaaz
to detect and deter disinformation ahead of the
EU elections. Over the next few months, Avaaz
members from across Europe will be working
alongside this newly launched team to monitor
disinformation operations across the European
Union, help identify fake news and prevent
their viral spreading, support in uncovering the
networks driving it, and work with platforms
and governments to correct false or misleading
content and hold perpetrators accountable. Avaaz
is aiming to provide more of such in-depth reports
to inform the public and decision makers about
the spread of disinformation across the continent.
If you want to schedule an interview with
one of Avaaz’s campaign directors or simply
stay informed about further reports andinvestigations from our team - please get intouch with
Julie Deruy:+33676477259 /julie@avaaz.org
Andrew Legon:+447429865292 /andrew.legon@avaaz.org

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