The Real Hong Kong

Hong Kong Culture | A personal view

Fake Hong Kong Images on Instagram

Let me be clear

I hate fake images supposedly taken in Hong Kong and posted on Instagram in an effort to get “likes” and this company hongkong.explore has a history of posting fake Hong Kong images on Instagram and despite them responding to me admitting they are fake they continue to post them.

This organisation posts something like 10 - 15 images a day and they get many thousands of likes and hundreds of comments for a typical post all in an effort to promote the Hong Kong app for a company called Tripscout

Personally, I do not think much of their site, the quality of the images varies markedly depending on who is taking the images, they use too many drone images and quite often they post images of places in China and pass them off as Hong Kong images, clearly editorial control is very much lacking.

…. but it is this image shown above that drives me and my Private Tour Guide associates and friends crazy

the image was first posted something like 6 or 7 months ago in 2021 and quite a few of us Private Tour Guides in Hong Kong pointed out to them that this location simply DOES NOT EXIST in Hong Kong
in fact quite a few people posted comments telling them it was a fake image
I sent quite a lengthy message to them explaining that fake images such as this could hurt Hong Kong’s image and you would end up with hundreds if not thousands of people turning up in Hong Kong looking for this amazing spot
They told me it was a composite image of a drone shot stitched onto another shot, in other words totally fake but they made no comment as to whether they would remove the image

Since they they keep re posting the image, I think 2 days ago was the 4th time they have posted the image billing it as one of their most popular images despite the fact that the location does not exist and they simply ignore all the requests for information as to where this “spot” is.

I keep posting comments about it being fake and pointing out that I am a Private Tour Guide and have lived in Hong Kong for 50 years and you might imagine that people would think I knew what I was talking about, apparently not with request after request flooding in asking for details of the location.

The image itself is supposedly the view from the Peak on Hong Kong Island and it is a fabulous view but there is nowhere on the Peak that you can go to get this view, there are no steps and such as shown in the image, it should be pointed out that I have been to the Peak over 6,000 times since 1972.

You have been warned!

Go here for all of my 140,000+ images taken in Hong Kong