Lying clickbait: Photoshop fakes and optical illusions

Those crazy clickbait con artists are at it again. They’re trying to pass off Photoshopped pictures as the real deal and optical illusions as something they’re not.
Here are the latest examples.

A Taboola-sponsored article titled “Look closely: 24 photos that will make your palms sweaty” used a photo of a snorkeler with a great white shark behind her. It’s a Photoshop fake. The original photo has no shark.

Another Taboola article titled “The deadliest snakes ever found on the planet” used a badly Photoshopped picture of an elephant being killed by a giant boa constrictor. The original photo was from a Huffington Post article about veterinarians treating animals in Africa.

Yet another Taboola article titled “20+ mysterious photos that cannot be explained” includes a picture that can be easily explained. It’s a Photoshopped phony purporting to show the skeleton of a giant human being excavated by archeologists. The original photo is a human skeleton available as a stock image from AFP and Getty Images. (See article by French blog La Verite Perdue, or The Lost Truth.)

An article by Revcontent carried the headline “17 incredible pictures taken just a second before disaster” used a photo of a woman clinging to a cliff and kissing her boyfriend. As I’ve noted previously, this is an optical illusion. The woman is safe, only a few feet above the ground, on a rock in a Brazilian park called Pedra do Telegrafo.

And finally, Taboola (yeah, those guys again) ran a similarly themed article titled “20+ photos taken right before the disaster strike.” That grammar. Ouch. Anyway it featured a woman on the beach looking at a wave that appears ready to swamp her. The photo taken in 2012 on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii. The giant winter swells break just off shore and dissipate before reaching the beachgoers. (See articles by JustMyPhoto, Lanikai Bath and Body, and Izismile.)