Wrote: Etrit Rexhepi
A TikTok account named “albinkurti_primeminister" published yesterday (April 10) a video featuring former president Hashim Thaçi.
In the audio added to the video material, which does not match the images shown, the voice of a person is heard giving his assessment of the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, which in the caption attached to the video, is claimed to represent the voice and opinion of former President Thaçi.
But, after verifying the facts by hibrid.info, it was found that the voice heard in the audio was taken from a video material, which shows a citizen expressing his opinion about Prime Minister Kurti.
Based on some of the commenters on this TikTok post, hibrid.info estimates that the caption claiming that the video depicts Thaçi commenting on Kurti can be taken for granted by the audience.
Link to the video material published by the "albinkurti_kryeminister" account on TikTok:
Some of the commenters in this publication/see photo:
After checking with search engines, hibrid.info has found on YouTube, the video material that presents a citizen as he gives his opinion on Prime Minister Albin Kurti, the audio of which is attached to the aforementioned video, where the former PDK leader appears (see here).
Hibrid.info has also found that the footage showing former Prime Minister Thaçi was taken from his speech at the Diaspora Summit held in Tirana five years ago, in 2019 (see here and here).
Analyze:
The caption of a video featuring former President Hashim Thaçi, which claims that the latter's voice can be heard in the audio while giving praise for Prime Minister Albin Kurti, does not reflect the truth.
Hibrid.info has found that the audio was taken from another video material from a short interview with a citizen and was placed in this publication.
Based on its work methodology, hibrid.info assesses this content as "Fraud".
Reasoning:
The “Deception” rating is given to informational content that is manipulated in terms of visual (deepfake, cheapfake), audio, or textual content to deceive the audience. This form of deception is usually used to produce false and manipulated content.