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Why does nobody talk about how many old photos online are completely mislabeled?
I was looking up the 1919 Chicago race riots for a school project my nephew needed help with. Found a photo on a history blog that claimed to show the aftermath, but the street names and building details didn't match any map from that year. Did some digging with the library's digital archives and it turned out the photo was from a completely different riot in 1921. Three different fact-checking sites had reposted that same wrong caption. Has anyone else run into old photos being incorrectly dated or placed like this?
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kaid593mo ago
See it different, most people just grab old photos from archives without checking the original source, so mistakes get copied over and over. Happens a ton with historical stuff, you just caught one of the thousands.
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mila_flores83mo ago
Is it really that big of a deal though... I mean people sharing old photos isn't exactly causing world hunger or anything. It's just a picture, doesn't have to be perfect. Most folks aren't historians looking for exact sources, they just think the image is cool or interesting. You're acting like it's some huge problem when really it's just a tiny mistake in a sea of internet stuff. Honestly I think you're overthinking it, let people have their fun without turning everything into a lecture about accuracy.
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