Wrote: Etrit Rexhepi
Machines that are taking sand from the deserts of Africa, spreading it into the atmosphere, to pollute the air.
This is the claim of a video published on April 4, by the account named "dardangashi505", on Instagram.
However, hibrid.info has found that the images shown do not depict the deserts of Africa and that they show the work of some agricultural machinery in Brazil.
Link to the video material published by the "dardangashi505" account on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5UTrlOIOQH
By researching using the automated search program, "InVid", hibrid.info has found that the same video with this claim has been circulating on social media in other languages.
The claim has been addressed by various fact-checking platforms, but the article on “Knack.be” (here), served as the basis for research by hibrid.info (see here).
Information indicates that the footage was taken from a 2019 video on a YouTube channel dedicated to agribusiness in Brazil, called "Agroband" (see here).
From the 45th second of the story in Portuguese, the video in question appears, from which it can be seen that the footage was not filmed from the desert (see here).
While, to prove that agricultural machinery is present in the moments shown above, hibrid.info has found videos with similar scenes, which are described as part of the seed harvesting process (see here and here).
Other research by hibrid.info has found that the last sandstorms from the Sahara, which have also affected the European continent, were recorded in April of this year (see here and here).
Analyze:
The claim about various machines being used to distribute sand from the desert is untrue.
The images shown by which the claim is presented actually show agricultural seed collection techniques.
Based on the working methodology, hibrid.info evaluates this content as "Conspiracy Theory".
Reasoning:
"Conspiracy theories" are considered to be informational content that contains a false or unverifiable description of a phenomenon, event or person, presenting it as part or the result of a secret plan ("conspiracy"). The characteristic of these contents is that they present a series of claims, presented as facts, between which cause-effect relationships are established, without providing any reliable evidence.