Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
An earthquake resistant building built with Nepali technology oscillates
Fact
Viral video actually shows an edited high-rise building Lansum Square in Visakhapatnam
A 10-second video showing a high-rise building oscillating during an earthquake allegedly built in Nepal for the first time with Nepali earthquake-resistant technology is going viral on TikTok. Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
TikTok user @rohit3official posted a video showing a high-rise building swinging back and forth. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Built with Nepali earthquake-resistant technology.” Audio accompanying the video says, “Earthquake-resistant building for the first time in Nepal. See the incredible technology.” The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video posted on June 6 has garnered 6975 likes, 57 users have shared it and 77 people have commented on it until the last count.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker split the video into several keyframes and conducted reverse searches on them. The search results showed many images matching the building shown in the viral video, pointing us towards Lansum Square in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh state of India.
Then, we conducted a search on YouTube using the keyword ‘Lansum Square’ which threw up several results. On checking a video posted on the YouTube channel named YT Video, we found that the video frames and its duration exactly matched the viral video. However, we didn’t find any authentic videos or reports about the Lansum Square tower swinging or oscillating as shown in the viral video.
Thus, we found that the viral video shows Lansum Square tower in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh state of India and the building is made to appear swinging by using video editing technology.
Conclusion
The video claiming to show an earthquake resistant high-rise building built with Nepali technology for the first time in Nepal actually shows one of the tallest buildings in Visakhapatnam, India.
Result: Edited video
Sources
YT Video/YouTube, 23 May, 2023
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
