Sri Lanka Brief apologises for incorporating a fake video link in the latest Update on Cyclone Ditwah: Key Facts and Lessons Learned: BBC weather today in South and Central Asia – November 25th 2025.
We have deleted the link and paragraph related to the video.
This mistake does not affect our observations on Cyclone Ditwah.
We have found that the URL of the Video does not belong to the BBC website.
Here is what we found searching with the help of CHAT GPT.
- The video is categorized under “Science & Technology” (per metadata from a YouTube-metadata-viewer tool). YTLarge
- It was uploaded on 2024-10-09 (according to the metadata-viewer record). YTLarge
- It has a non-zero view count (~39,213) and like/dislike count listed in the metadata. YTLarge
What we don’t know / what looks suspicious
- The metadata-viewer data does not show a clear channel name that corresponds to “BBC” or one of BBC’s official YouTube channels. The publicly available metadata dump we accessed lacks a confirmed uploader name.
- The category “Science & Technology” is odd for a weather forecast video. Official weather forecast videos from large media organisations tend to be categorized under “News & Politics,” “News,” or “Entertainment,” rather than “Science & Technology.”
- There is no visible “verified” badge or link to an official BBC channel in what we saw — which would normally accompany a legitimate BBC upload.
- I was unable to locate corroborating references (e.g. on the official BBC YouTube page or on BBC’s website) to confirm that this video is officially from BBC.
Based on the mismatches above (odd category, missing uploader verification, no trace on official BBC channels), the evidence suggests this video is unlikely to be an official release from BBC — or at least, we have no reliable confirmation that it is. The presence of “BBC” in the title might have been added by whoever uploaded it (intentionally or not).