Bird or Drone: The Crowdsource The Truth Test
What This Image Shows
A screenshot of two posts by Crowdsource The Truth (@JG_CSTT). The first reads: "I have never seen a bird fly over 100MPH upward without flapping its wings while remaining totally horizontal. Maybe @PalmerLuckey has... Who killed Charlie Kirk?" -- attached to a video still bearing the timecode 12;24;00;05 with a yellow magnifier over a tiny object in the sky above the plaza.
The second post, fifteen hours earlier, reads: "These unknown flying objects were recorded by @lifeisdriving at @UVU during the Charlie Kirk assassination. Viewers can compare what are obviously birds and insects to what I believe look like as many as three different drones. Who flew the..."
The argument being made is a specific and testable one -- not "there is a dot," but "this dot's motion is inconsistent with a bird" -- and the poster is explicit that some objects in the same footage are obviously birds and insects. That is a more careful framing than most of the drone claims. It still rests on estimating speed and attitude from a compressed video at extreme distance, where the error bars are very large, and the identification remains unresolved. The timecode places the frame about a minute after the 12:23 PM shot.
See Military Drones On Video, TPUSA Production Drone, and Drones.
Related Areas
- Cluster: Aircraft and Flight Evidence
- Section: Planes
- All photo evidence: Photos