A TikTok video showing Gingoog City with a modern highway, skyscrapers, desert, and with a snow-covered area is fake.
TikTok user @chrysippus posted the video last March with the description “It’s just a city in Mindanao, Philippines.”
Gingoog City is a component city of Misamis Oriental province in Northern Mindanao.
However, the clips in the video posted by @chrysippus are incorrect depiction of the current state of the city.
The first clip shown in the video is a highly modernized and busy highway with skyscrapers beside it. Upon review, the video is found to be the Sheikh Zayed Road located in downtown Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and not in Gingoog City.
The video has also shown a clip of rows of buildings on the beach coast with high mountains behind. Although Gingoog City is bounded on the north by Gingoog Bay, an inlet of the Bohol Sea, and, generally, a mountainous city, the area depicted is not in Gingoog City, but the Amalfi Coast situated in Italy.
The colorful towers behind a beach in the video are also not in Gingoog City, but in Qingdao Beach in China.
The last two clips shown in the TikTok video suggest that Gingoog City has snow-covered parts and a desert region in the city, which are both incorrect.
Gingoog City, just like the other parts of the country, experiences dry and wet weather conditions only.
According to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration, the dry season occurs from December to May and the rainy season from June and November.
Gingoog City also doesn’t have a desert in its vicinity. Although there is a semi-desert area in the Philippines, it is located in Laoag City where sand dunes are found in Barangay La Paz.
MindaNews earlier fact-checked a TikTok video also posted by @chrysippus about a misleading depiction of Marawi City. A comment in the fake Marawi video requested for Gingoog City to be featured next.
As of October 18, the TikTok video depicting a fake Gingoog City garnered 166 likes, 44 comments, 19 saved, and 9,330 views.
As with all our other reports, MindaNews welcomes leads or suggestions from the public to potential fact-check stories.
MindaNews is a verified signatory to the Code of Principles of the International Fact-Checking Network. (Miah Christine Bontilao / MindaNews)
