Fact Check: Edited picture of heart-shaped city viral in the name of Venice

New Delhi (Vishvas News): Sharing a picture of a heart-shaped city, many social media users are claiming that this is a picture of Venice in Italy. Vishvas News checked the viral post and found the claim to be misleading. The viral picture has been edited. This picture has been created using the mirror image tool.

What’s in the viral post?

Twitter user @Outrojules shared the viral photo with the caption “Venice, Italy.”

The archived version of the post can be viewed here.

Investigation

On analyzing the viral picture carefully, it can be noticed the right side and left side of the picture are exactly the same. The buildings can be seen merging right in the middle of the picture. This leads to suspicion that the image may have been created using the mirror image tool.

On reverse image searching the picture, we found this photo on a Facebook page named ‘Home Decor Ideas’. Here it was described as a mirror image and credit was given to an Instagram page named Lennart.

Upon searching, we also found this picture on an Instagram page named lennart. There were 3 pictures here. The first picture is the aerial view of a city that looks like a half heart. In the second picture, this part is shown mirror imaged and in the third picture these two pictures have been merged.

We contacted lennart page and asked about this picture. In response, we were told “This picture was taken by me. The original city is not in the shape of a heart but a part of it looks like a half heart. I mirrored this half and completed the heart and on the occasion of Valentine’s Day 2021, published it. The picture is clearly edited.”

After that, we found the city of Venice on Google Maps. We found that the city is not in the shape of a heart. The part that looks like a half heart can be seen on Google Maps.

A scan of the profile of Jules, the page that shared this post, reveals that the page has more than 85000 followers.