In January 2024, the reports dispersed in social networks and the media that they allegedly expelled a student who spared the Russian -speaking song “such as Putin” from the University of Florida. We checked the video and a letter from the university given as evidence.

According to numerous publications in the media and Telegram channels, an American student was expelled from the university after he performed the composition "Such as Putin"The group" Singing Together ". The authors of such posts also attach a record of the performance itself, and many of them call the young man a black manner. Blogger Nikolay Sobolev* in his Telegram channel (28,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) wroteWhat the student submitted evidence of the deduction is a letter, which states that the disciplinary commission was engaged in the consideration of the case, which concluded: “The student’s actions depict the university and some officials in a bad light.”

The first posts about this incident appeared on the network on January 15 in the evening of Moscow time. According to the service TGSTAT, in a part -time day, almost 200 records appeared in Telegram on the exclusion of an American student who, in total, scored almost 2 million views. So, the TV channel wrote about this "Tsargrad-TV"(27,000 views), as well as"Pozdnyakov 3.0"(234,000),"Uncle Glory"(172 000),"Observer"(165,000),"Putin in Telegram"(147 000), Voblya (126 000), "The first folk"(105,000),"Petya the first"(87 000),"Alexander Semchenko"(77 000),"From the scene"(63,000),"True Russia"(48,000) and other notes on the same topic can be found on the newspaper sites"Moscow Komsomolets" And "Public news service", And posts - on VKontakte (examples here, here, here And here) and in the social network X (here And here).

A viral video lasting 24 seconds is divided into two parts. First, the video shows a dark -skinned singing man, while the inscription in the upper part of the frame reads: “Today he made a brave act near the Campus Square.” The second half of the record shows a letter about the exclusion from the University of Florida with another signature imposed on the bottom: "And he was expelled from the university." At the same time, the student allegedly sang a song about the Russian president:

He got me like that, and I drove him away.
And I want now such as Putin.
Such as Putin full of strength.
Such as Putin, so that he does not drink.
Such as Putin, so as not to offend.

However, the movements of the lips of a person captured on the video do not correspond to what he supposedly pronounces. After assuming that the audio road of the original video could be replaced, “verified” decided to look for the source in Tiktok - earlier the authors of fakes repeatedly used videos placed on this platform to create them. It turned out that the source record was Published there on October 27, 2023 by a user named Mohau (Mohau_on_tiktok). The video lasts a minute, and there is no information about the exclusion from the American university or Putin’s mentions (the man really sings the song, but it is not in Russian). According to the description of the profile, the signatures for the video and the tags set, Mohau is a vocal student at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He called a brave act not the performance of a song about the President of the Russian Federation, but the decision to perform on the street in front of the public. In the description under the video, in addition to English, a singer Used Sesoto - one of the state Languages SOUTH AFRICA.

“Verified” set the exact place of shooting - the video was actually recorded in Johannesburg near The Campus Square shopping center located near the local university.

As for the letter about the expulsion from the University of Florida, the authors of the fake used one of the first pictures in the issuance of Google by request “University of Florida Letter” (“University of Florida Letter”). The original was sent in 2017, in a statement by an applicant named Abu Farzan Mitul congratulated on admission to graduate school. To create a fake, it remained only to change the text and date, while the signatures of two university employees (including the head of the reception commission of graduate school) remained completely identical.

The earliest post with the fake “Verified” was found by keywords in the Telegram channel ”Freshness”(31,000 views), where the record was published on January 15 at 18:59 Moscow time. In our analysis, this channel is more than a dozen times mentioned Due to the spread of a variety of fakes, and he repeatedly became the original source of fakes.

*The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation Brought Blogger Nikolai Sobolev in the list of foreign agents.

Photo on the cover: social networks

Fake

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