Glossary: Metadata
Launch library · evergreen read
Metadata is, quite simply, data about data, information describing a file rather than forming its actual visible content. For a photo, this can include the capture date, the camera model used, and sometimes rough location information, stored separately from the image itself but travelling quietly alongside the file wherever it happens to go online.
Metadata is genuinely useful for verification purposes because it is often overlooked entirely during casual editing, meaning it can preserve valuable clues about an image's true origin even when the visible content has itself been altered or recontextualised by whoever chose to share it further along the way.
It is also fairly easily stripped or falsified by anyone with basic tools, so metadata works best as one input alongside other checks rather than as a standalone proof of anything on its own. Its simple absence is fairly common and not inherently suspicious by itself in most ordinary cases.