Image shows “This is happening right now…in Australia!! 1.5 Million showed up for a Freedom March/Rally.”
Image is from Woodstock festival in 1969, not from Australia freedom rally
If your time is short
• The aerial photo was taken at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969.
A Facebook group advocating for so-called “freedom convoys” posted a decades-old image and claimed it showed a current event.
“This is happening right now…in Australia!! 1.5 Million showed up for a Freedom March/Rally,” the Feb. 12 post on Facebook said. It included an aerial photo of thousands of people gathered in an open, grassy area that appears to be rural.
The post, which has since been removed from Facebook, was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
The photo that accompanies the post was taken at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, according to the Getty Images archive.
The post was shared in a Facebook group called Freedom Convoy Lithuania 2022, which includes posts about the “Freedom Convoy” movement in Canada, a demonstration against COVID-19 measures, and other, similar protests around the world.
Using photos misleadingly to misrepresent the size and scope of protests against COVID-19 measures is not uncommon.
Supporters of the Canadian movement have used images of other convoys to misrepresent the size and scope of the movement. When anti-lockdown protesters in Australia had a “Freedom Day” event in 2020, its advocates also misleadingly used outdated photos and music festival images to support claims about crowd sizes, fact-checkers there found.
We rate the claim that a photo shows a “Freedom March” in Australia with 1.5 million people Pants on Fire!
Our Sources
Facebook post, Feb. 12, 2022
Getty Images, "Aerial View Of Woodstock Festival," Aug. 15, 1969
PolitiFact, "10 photos falsely linked to Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ protests," Feb. 14, 2022
RMIT ABC Fact Check, "How 'freedom day' protesters have been using misleading archival images to further their cause," Sept. 4, 2020
Washington Post, "Trudeau invokes Emergencies Act against Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ trucker protest," Feb. 14, 2022
