What was claimed
A photo shared on Facebook shows a riot taking place recently near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Our verdict
The photo actually dates from 2019 and shows a protest by the ‘gilets jaunes’ movement.
Arc de Triomphe photo shows 2019 ‘gilets jaunes’ protest, not recent riots
5 July 2023
A post on Facebook claims to show a photo of recent riots in front of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. But the photo was actually taken in 2019.
The image, which is credited to the Reuters news agency, shows a large fire in the foreground and crowds of protesters with the Arc de Triomphe in the background.
The caption of the post, which was published on 2 July, says: “If you don’t know what’s going on in France right now, look up #FranceRiots”.
However, this photo does not show the recent riots that have been taking place across France following the fatal shooting by a police officer of a 17-year-old boy on 27 June.
The photo instead comes from a “gilets jaunes” (yellow vest) protest that took place near the Arc de Triomphe and on the Champs-Élysées boulevard on 16 March 2019.
The gilets jaunes protests began in November 2018 over a fuel tax hike (that was later abandoned) and became a wider anti-government movement. The movement is named after the fluorescent high-vis jackets that all motorists must carry in their cars by law in France.
People in the photo can be seen wearing the high-vis jackets, which is a clue that it is not from recent riots where protesters do not generally appear to be wearing them.
The riots in France have become the subject of significant online misinformation in recent days, and we have already written about a number of false posts such as those claiming zoo animals were released onto the streets of Paris.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen pictures from protests being mislabelled—for example, we’ve previously seen misleading claims about photos that actually came from a 1991 protest in Moscow, a Spanish protest about healthcare and celebrations after France won the 2018 World Cup.
Photos like these can spread quickly online and give an inaccurate impression of current events. For more help on how to spot this kind of online misinformation, see our guides on how to identify misleading images and videos.
Image courtesy of Ank Kumar
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This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the photo does not show recent events in Paris and actually dates from 2019.