This isn’t a video of a 'gay party in Italy' just before the pandemic

A recent Facebook post speculates that COVID-19 is an act of God — and not a natural disaster. 

"Gay party in Italy few weeks before COVID-19," reads the caption of a video posted to Facebook on April 10. "Maybe God is angry at the world." 

The video shows a crowd of men, some without and some wearing rainbow-colored tank tops, gathering close together. Some are kissing.

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) 

First, this video wasn’t shot in Italy. We found several tweets from February identifying the footage as a clip from the Bahian Carnival in Brazil. But the clip isn’t from this year — it’s from 2018. 

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AFP, which reported that 19 seconds into the clip a woman can be heard saying to the crowd, "This year is a World Cup year." 

The last women’s World Cup was in 2019 and the last men’s World Cup was in 2018. 

Social media posts from 2018 show attendees wearing the same rainbow colored shirts with the word "Crocodilo" on the back that the men in the Facebook post video are wearing. According to AFP, such shirts are issued as proof that people paid to attend the event and vary from year to year. Bloco Crocodilo is one of the carnival’s street parties. You can see designs from other years here and here. 

We rate this post False.