Indonesia shopping mall rejects fabricated posts of 'fainting' over Japanese watch sale
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on February 28, 2023 at 10:32
- 5 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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"Oh God, so many people passed out in a shopping mall in Jakarta," reads the caption of an Indonesian-language Facebook post, shared on February 1, 2023.
"Yesterday, the famous Japanese-made watch brand Osazuki opened its first branch in Jakarta," it continues to say.
"People were excited about the promotion and came in large numbers. I also came very early and still had to queue for more than 4 hours to buy. The situation got worse as many people fainted from exhaustion and lack of oxygen."
The Facebook post, which has been shared more than 50 times, shows three images: one of crowds seemingly outside the Grand Indonesia shopping mall in Jakarta, a second of a fainting woman and a third of someone holding two wristwatches.
The Facebook post urges people to "buy online to avoid queues" and provides a link to a website asking for visitors' personal details in order to purchase a watch.
The same photos and claim appeared in other Facebook posts and racked up more than 200 shares, such as here, here and here.
AFP, however, found no reports from reputable Indonesian media outlets of such an incident occurring at the mall, and a spokesperson for Grand Indonesia said the claim was false.
"An event involving an uncontrollable crowd of people queueing to buy things that resulted in some people fainting has never happened at Grand Indonesia," spokeswoman Annisa Hazarini told AFP on February 21, 2023.
Doctored photos
Furthermore, the first image, which apparently shows crowds outside Grand Indonesia mall, is doctored.
Google reverse image searches found the original photo of the crowd in an article about a mall in Malaysia that closed in March 2018 after people rushed to take advantage of a promotion on Apple products.
On March 2, 2018, the MyTOWN mall in Kuala Lumpur closed for the day, citing safety concerns after "thousands of customers" showed up to get their hands on discounted iPhones and MacBook Pro laptops, news website Coconuts KL reported.
The same picture was also published in a report about the same incident by local newspaper Malay Mail.
A photo of the Grand Indonesia mall in Jakarta has been added into the background of the original photo of crowds outside the MyTOWN mall in Kuala Lumpur.
The Indonesian mall's photo corresponds with a picture of the mall on Google Street View.
Below are screenshots showing how a genuine picture of the Grand Indonesia mall (top) and a genuine photo of the crowds outside MyTOWN mall (bottom) were merged to create the doctored image (centre):
A reverse image search found the second photo in a news report about a woman who fainted at a Huawei sales event in Singapore in July 2019.
"Elderly woman faints outside Huawei Jurong Point store allegedly because of S$54 promotion," reads the headline of Mothership.sg's article, published on July 26, 2019.
A similar photo appeared in a news report published by Stomp, a Singaporean online media outlet, on the same day.
According to the reports, huge crowds turned up at Huawei stores across the city-state to buy a heavily discounted Huawei Y6 Pro mobile phone model. Many of the people who queued up were senior citizens because the S$54 (US$40) price tag was only available to those aged 50 and above.
The photos of a Muslim woman fanning the elderly woman who fainted were taken from a video posted on Facebook.
Police were called to manage "increasingly agitated crowds" who showed up at stores across Singapore, only to be told the phones were sold out, The Straits Times, a local newspaper, reported.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the second photo in the misleading post (left) and the photo in Mothership.sg's report (right):
Japanese watch brand
The third photo, which shows someone holding wristwatches, corresponds to an image of the D20 smartwatch model from Pakistani brand Zayraz.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the third photo in the misleading post (left) and the photo on Zayraz's website (right):
AFP found no trace of a Japanese watch brand called "Osazuki". An AFP journalist in Tokyo also could not find a watch brand by that name in the country.
Online scammers often use Facebook to lure in victims, promising flashy discounted goods in exchange for personal information.
AFP has previously debunked similar false posts purporting fainting incidents at malls in Malaysia and Surabaya, another city in Indonesia.
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