People Are Sharing Fake Facebook Live Videos “From Space"

Technology might be advanced, but not that advanced.

If you were on Facebook yesterday, you may have seen several media outlets purportedly broadcasting live from space.

A few hours later, Unilad also did a Facebook Live, with the caption "Space from the International Space Station!".

People were really impressed, marvelling at both the view from space and the state of technology.

However, astute commenters were not convinced.

Indeed, there was – and has been – no mention of a livestream from space on either NASA's or the International Space Station's respective Facebook pages, even though they were tagged in the post.

That's because Viral USA was not actually broadcasting live from space. The video was shot by US astronaut Terry Virts during a spacewalk on the ISS in 2015.

Unilad's video, meanwhile, came from a spacewalk video that was shot in 2013.

The livestreams lasted almost four hours because the videos were on loop.

A NASA spokesman told the BBC that the videos were not live footage from the ISS, adding that they must be old spacewalk footage.

Unilad said it posted old footage on a Facebook livestream to "test the capabilities of what the 'live broadcast' feature on Facebook could really do".

Viral USA, meanwhile, had not yet responded to the BBC.

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