**Viral News Snippet: Pierre Deny’s "Time Capsule" Claim Sparks Global Fact-Check Frenzy**
**The Claim:** A viral TikTok video, now viewed over 12 million times, purports that French influencer and self-proclaimed "time traveler" Pierre Deny has released a new video from 2023 predicting a major global event set for 2025—specifically, the "sudden collapse of the online search engine market" in May. The clip shows Deny allegedly holding an old smartphone with a blurry timestamp, claiming Google will be "replaced by an AI-driven decentralized search network."
**The Verdict: FAKE.**
**Why It’s Fake:**
- **Deny’s Disavowal:** Pierre Deny’s official Instagram account posted a statement on Thursday, calling the video a "deepfake." He noted, "I have never made a prediction about search engines. This is a clumsy edit stitched from my old paranormal-themed podcast interviews."
- **Digital Artifacts:** Forensic analysis by the fact-checking outlet *VerifyThis* found multiple clues: the phone in the video is an iPhone 12, which was discontinued in 2021; the timestamp font is a recreation, not Apple’s iOS system font; and the background music is a royalty-free track titled "Mysterious Glitch," uploaded to stock sites in 2022.
- **No Prior Pattern:** Deny’s known "predictions" (which he calls "parascience entertainment") have always been vague—like "major weather shifts"—never specific, falsifiable claims about corporate tech disruptions. His past work was debunked in a 2022 *20 Minutes* article.
- **The Real Source:** The original audio was traced to a 2021 Reddit thread about "conspiracy theory generators," where a user scripted a fake Deny prediction. A parody account then compiled the clip