Dublin: Hundreds gather in streets for hoax Halloween parade

Hundreds of people gathered in Dublin city centre on Thursday night for a Halloween parade which turned out to be a hoax.

It’s understood a website set up to generate ad revenue circulated the false information that a parade was due to take place.

Pictures on social media show crowds lining O’Connell Street in the city centre, waiting for the parade to begin – but with no police or stewards present.

Gardaí (Irish police) released a statement saying that no Halloween parade was scheduled and asking for those who turned out to “disperse safely”.

The size of the crowds caused a brief disruption to the Luas tram network, with parts of the Red and Green line services out of operation for about half an hour.

Bertie Brosnan is a social media content creator and filmmaker who went to livestream the event.

“I looked at the website and I thought it was legit

“I was duped,” Bertie told BBC News NI.

When Mr Brosnan arrived, he realised quickly that the parade wasn’t happening.

He said it quickly dawned on him “because parades usually have barricades, security, police and some sort of organisation” and he could see no evidence of that, just “vast amounts of people”.

After seeing Mr Brosnan’s livestream of the event on TikTok, a man called Martin Meany quickly realised something wasn’t right.

The number of advertisements on the homepage alerted him to the fact that it was a hoax website, composed mainly of AI-generated news to generate ad revenue.

People had been searching online for a parade in Dublin and there was no existing content – because no such parade had been planned – so the website creators “saw their opportunity and took it”.

“It’s hard to spot these websites because the content is so good,” Mr Meany said.

But he urged people to “be extremely critical of the media they are consuming and engaging with online.”

Among those on O’Connell Street for the expected festivities was Hashel Thilanka.

Speaking to BBC News NI, Mr Thilanka said that he was “disappointed” that the event had not been identified as fake before it was due to start.

He said he gathered with others for an hour before being informed by members of the Gardaí that the event was not happening.