An image shared on Facebook in South Africa in January 2022 had just over 3,500 views in 24 hours.
The image of a lake looks like a human eye, surrounded by steep banks of purple soil and green vegetation. It is shared with a caption claiming it shows “Kerid Crater Lake in Iceland, known as ‘The eye of the world’”.
Iceland is an island country located in the North Atlantic Ocean. But does this image accurately depict a lake there?
Photo of Kerið crater lake photoshopped
Africa Check could not find the origin of the image in the Facebook post, although it has been shared on various social media platforms.
But Kerið is a volcanic crater lake in southern Iceland.
The crater was formed around 6,500 years ago and the lake is as deep as 14 meters.
Various photos published online, including on the image library Shutterstock, show that the lake doesn’t look quite dramatically like a human eye but more like an ordinary body of water. We could find no reliable source confirming that the lake is known as “the eye of the world”.
The image in the social media post appears to have been heavily digitally manipulated and does not show what Kerið crater really looks like.
For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false
A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?
Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.
Publishers guideAfrica Check teams up with Facebook
Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.
The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.
You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.
Add new comment