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Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021

Were images of a crashed helicopter and destroyed homes taken soon after the Taliban took control of Kabul?

Christiana Dillard, Lead Stories
no

Digitized images of a crashed helicopter in a residential area with destroyed homes and rubble. The caption of this social media post is:

This picture was taken in Kabul less than 24 hours after the taliban took control…

But was it?

If it looked awfully familiar to you, you just might be a devoted player of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a first-person shooter video game that takes place in Russia, Ukraine and an unnamed Middle Eastern country.

The post came from Allratesmatter, a satire page, and the photos did in fact come from Call of Duty.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

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