‘Energy-saving poster urging Swiss to inform against neighbors’ is fabricated

 

Screenshot of the Facebook post. 

 

News Brief 

A Facebook post published Sept. 11, 2022 claims that Switzerland encourages the public to report their neighbors for overheating their homes to higher than 19°C and offers citizens who report by phone with a reward of 200 Swiss francs. The post also shared an image of a poster. 

As of the publication of this report, the Facebook post had been shared four times, and it had received one comment as well as 17 likes or reactions. Similar claims had been circulating on Twitter here and here, and on Weibo here and here.    

Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, energy prices in Europe have soared and supplies have been tight. 

Fact-checking 

The poster circulating online shows a woman making a phone call. The text in the poster, written in German, can be translated as, “Does your neighbor heat the apartment to over 19 degrees Celsius? Please inform us.” The poster also shows a logo of the Swiss Confederation (Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft) on the upper left and the telephone number of The Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (Eidgenössisches Departement für Umwelt, Verkehr, Energie und Kommunikation, UVEK). It features a woman reporting to the government by phone because the room temperature of her neighbor’s home exceeds 19 degrees Celsius. 

Through reverse image searches, a similar image published Dec. 3, 2015 by the stock image website Alamy has been found. The woman’s appearance, attire and gesture are identical to those of the woman in the poster. In addition, a picture captioned “Blank billboard mockup” was found on another stock image website Freepik, in which the reflective position and shape of the billboard are also the same as the Facebook image. 

 

Screenshot of the photo published by the stock image website Alamy. 

 

Comparison of the billboard (left) in the Facebook image and the one in the picture “Blank billboard mockup” (right). 

With further keyword searches, a clarification statement published on the official website of the Swiss Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications has been found. The statement can be translated as, “Since Sept. 10, false information about reporting neighbors’ overheating behavior has been circulating on social media. The government has nothing to do with this call. The poster image misuses the government logo and phone numbers. The government has neither produced such posters nor launched such calls. The government has launched an investigation into this abuse.” Therefore, the claim about “reporting neighbors’ overheating behavior” is false. The Swiss Federal Government has neither launched such calls nor produced the poster. 

Screenshot of the clarification statement published by the Swiss Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications. 

Simone Hug, the spokesperson of the Swiss Federal Department of Energy, clarified the matter on Aug. 16, 2022, through 20 Minuten, a daily newspaper in Switzerland. Hug emphasized that the government has nothing to do with “calling on the public to report neighbors for overheating their homes.”