A video signed on Facebook gives the impression that Joy News, The Multimedia Group’s news channel in Ghana, aired a news item highlighting a new mobile application from which some Ghanaians are making a lot of money.
The 45-second video clip features TV presenter Benjamin Akakpo supposedly reading an introduction to the news story with the slug: “Ghanaians are getting rich fast with a new smartphone app. A new application is blowing up the internet.”
The report begins with photos of young people who have supposedly become rich from using the new mobile app.
The video goes on to reveal the name of the said money-making app, “Slot New Generation.”
One major suspicion after manually reviewing the video was the lack of audio-to-video synchronisation.
Verification
In the first five seconds of the video, which shows Joy News journalist Benjamin Akakpo, there is no lip synchronisation which suggests the audio does not correspond with the video and is most likely a fabricated voice-over.
From five to ten seconds of the clip, Microsoft Bing’s reverse image search matched the short clip to that of a South African, Louis Jr. Tshakoane.
Other portions of the clip match scenes from this 3-year-old Youtube clip by Undercover Trillionaires (1:33 mins – 1:37 mins).
Further checks revealed that the Facebook page that shared the video was created on March 12, 2023, and after posting photos of luxurious cars, used the page to promote the contentious video.
Data from Meta’s ad library revealed that the page currently runs three other ads related to the same mobile application, supposedly making people rich.
When DUBAWA contacted Joy News presenter Benjamin Akakpo for comments, he described the video as fake and denied ever airing such material on television.
“Absolutely nothing in this video is real, true, or credible. I woke up one day and started having people reach out to me concerning this video purportedly aired on the AM Show on Joy News. I would like to state emphatically that JoyNews never aired any such item – and we never will. That is neither content we subscribe to nor associate with,” he said.
Akakpo also said a formal complaint had been made to Facebook.
“We have duly reported the matter for Facebook to take on the perpetrators,” he added.
Following up with the mobile app being promoted on the Google App store, we found that the app being promoted was uploaded on March 2, 2023.
The product is advertised as a mobile game with rewards.
Although the information on the Play Store suggests that the game has received 94 reviews, only three are in the store.
Two of the three reviews were negative.
This raises concern and is a major red flag for anyone looking to download and use the application.
Conclusion
The supposed Joy News video news content highlighting a new mobile app earning users money is false. The video is a combination of different unrelated videos with a voice-over. Also, there is no strong connection between what was marketed in the video and what the accompanying mobile application link describes on the Google Play Store.