A publication is circulating on social networks alleging that the “German Gefälschte Nachrichten Institute affirms that there was fraud in the elections in Brazil.” The publication is accompanied by an alleged screenshot of a news item from the German media “D4”, written in Brazilian Portuguese, which also alleges:

“According to the president of the institute, Dr. Alter Mann with Brile, PhD in Cybersecurity from Harvard, there is fraud in electronic voting machines in Brazil. Without fraud, Bolsonaro would have 74.55% of the valid votes, against 25.45% for Lula, according to the expert.

However, none of this is true: not only does the alleged institution not exist (since, ironically, “Gefälschte Nachrichten” means “fake news” in German), but the media itself that appears in the alleged screenshot it is actually a modified version of the page of Deutsche Welle, the real German news agency.

In a version of this publication consulted by the Observer on Facebook on November 19, 2022, which by that time had already had several shares and interactions, a Facebook user, who openly declares herself a supporter of Jair Bolsonaro on her profile, adds details of the supposed “news”.

“The report prepared by Gefälschte Nachrichten has 206 pages, where the specialist details the entire Software installation process in electronic voting machines in Brazil and the process to hide it from inspection,” the text reads.

The publication also says: “According to the expert’s report, the Arab tactic ‘ana’ ahmaq, hadhih al’akhbar muzayafa’ is being used in Brazil, which deals with a complex system of fraud in the voting algorithm, causing half of the the votes. to be counted as votes on the 13th. ‘This is the same tactic that the Chinese Communist Party uses to perpetuate itself [sic] I do not can. In this way, an apparent normality is maintained, since it confuses the less enlightened part of the electorate that blindly trusts the result, without seeking more information. The math is simple and you can check the calculations at home’, says the expert.”

“’They announced that Bolsonaro had 49.1% of the votes and Lula 50.9%. However, using the Arabic algorithm, half of Lula’s votes are made up of Bolsonaro’s votes, that is, in fact, he ended up with 74.55% of the votes for Bolsonaro and 25.45% of the votes. for Lula. But you don’t have to believe us, do the math yourself’, says Professor Alter Mann.

However, as the Brazilian agency Lupa points out, the entire publication is a set of easily dismantled falsehoods:

First of all, a simple Google search is enough to realize that the supposed “Institut Gefälschte Nachrichten” does not exist. More: A Google Translate query clarifies that “Gefälschte Nachrichten” means, in Portuguese, “fake news”. Another element of this post seems to point to the possibility that it was originally created to mock those who shared it: the alleged “Arab tactic ‘ana ‘ahmaq, hadhih al’akhbar muzayafa’” was invented, since that expression, when placed in Google Translate, returns the translation “I’m an idiot, this news is false.”

then the own screenshot It has several marks of having been manipulated. On the one hand, the entire page clearly resembles the website of the German agency Deutsche Welle, but the logo has been changed: while the original Deutsche Welle logo includes the letters DW, in this version the logo appears modified to D4. Is he slogan by Deutsche Welle, whose original version is “Made for Minds”, appears in this image as “Weide für Rinder”, which in German means “pasture for cattle”.

Finally, the figure of the “president of the institute, Dr. Alter Mann mit Brile”, has several elements that indicate that it is not real. “Alter Mann mit Brile” in German means “old man with glasses”. And it is enough to put that expression, in German, in Google to reach an image bank where the photograph used in the publication appears.

conclusion

The post is manifestly false. Not only is not a single fact presented that can be independently proven, but the entire post is riddled with elements that indicate its falsehood and show that it appears to have been designed to mock those who share it. The institute does not exist —nor does its director— and the image presented refers to a social media outlet that is not real either. Even so, the Observer found dozens of versions of this post on Facebook, shared by users who claim to be supporters of Jair Bolsonaro and who are using the content of the post as an argument against the legitimacy of the recent election of Lula da Silva as President of Brazil.

Thus, according to the Observer classification, this content is:

WRONG

In the Facebook rating system this content is:

FAKE: primary content claims are factually inaccurate. This option generally corresponds to “fake” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking sites.