A scene from the TV show Utopia, which aired between 2013 and 2014, was shared with a false narrative as a World Economic Forum commercial.
The captions on the posts claim this is a World Economic Forum (WEF) commercial, and many of the posts have linked it to the New World Order. The WEF logo appears towards the end of the video, as does the URL for the Great Reset, the WEF's COVID-19 pandemic recovery project. The video, however, is unrelated to the WEF or its project, the Great Reset.
Upon verification, we found that the video featured in the posts is not available on the WEF's official YouTube channel, portal, or Great Reset website. We found that the Great Reset advertisement was uploaded on the WEF's official YouTube channel on June 3, 2020, and the alleged clip was not even a part of it. By conducting a reverse image search of a keyframe from the video, we found that it is not an advertisement, but a scene from episode six, season two of the drama series ''Utopia.'' We also found the entire episode of the U.K. series uploaded on YouTube. Instead of WEF-related text as in the false posts, the original video ends with text stating "UTOPIA" on a green background at around the 2:49 timestamp. The end of the video has been deceptively edited to include the WEF emblem and the URL for the Great Reset.
IMDb states that Utopia is a TV series that aired from 2013 to 2014 and starred actors such as Adeel Akhtar, Paul Higgins, and Neil Maskell. The fictional drama series is described as some people finding a mysterious graphic novel, and then being pursued by the Network, a brutal organization. The clip and the TV show have no affiliation with the WEF or the Great Reset initiative that commenced in 2020.
The falsely credited posts' assertions and captions are part of both New World Order and COVID-19 conspiracy theories. The WEF began the Great Reset in 2020, which conspiracy theorists linked to an alleged New World Order plot. According to conspiracy theorists, the New World Order seeks to create a world where people are excluded from the right to own property and are controlled through various technologies. However, such conspiracy theories are unfounded, and the Great Reset is linked to preexisting conspiracies. Fabrication and misrepresentation are frequent rhetorical strategies in such conspiracy theories.
This claim is an instance of misrepresentation in which a video unrelated to the WEF was widely circulated to bolster conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists used this video to justify their claims that the WEF supported unethical or inhumane behavior. On the other hand, the accompanying false narratives or captions can provoke genuine presumptions of immoral acts even with no evidence of such wrongdoing.
We mark this claim as false as the clip is from a TV series, and the WEF has not posted a commercial using this video. This clip has been shared on social media platforms to propagate conspiracy theories.
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