In June 2019, a Facebook user shared the following image (archived here), purportedly illustrating the poor state of affairs in Los Angeles in particular and California overall:
Third world country? Nah, LA California. This is exactly what socialism is because California is now a socialist state so I hope you look carefully and see what socialism looks like..
Many commenters did not question the provenance of the image:
The land of very wealthy and very poor. California the perfect example of socialism. Just left there. Trust 10 years ago is was beautiful now it’s a 3rd world country and we are not talking LA I’m talking about the San Francisco Bay Area!!!!
It is highly unlikely that this is due to socialism. The housing prices and low paying jobs contribute to this humanitarian disaster.
However, this photograph shows neither the effects of socialism nor any direct backlash from high housing prices in the Bay Area, nor does it show anywhere in California. A reverse image search located instances of the photograph’s publication dating back several years.
In December 2015, UK-based tabloid the Daily Mail published the image as one of several in a photo set alongside an article headlined: “The Third World shanty town… in the heart of Paris: Roma gypsies create their own village built from rubbish and scrap in one of Europe’s great cities”:
Children’s toys and pushchairs are scattered across the tarpaulin-covered roofs of a Roma gypsy village built from rubbish and scrap in Paris.
Youngsters play between the shacks as their parents go about their everyday lives at the camp constructed on an disused railway line next to a ring road in one of Europe’s trendiest cities.
Roma communities from EU countries such as Romania and Bulgaria have caused huge controversy in France for at least the past decade.
In January 2016, the Guardian reported:
This section of the derelict Petite Ceinture railway – known for its hipster cafe and beer garden – is now home to a squatter camp too. Annabelle Azadé meets some of the 350 people who live in its makeshift shacks
For the past couple of years Boulevard Ornano in Paris’s 18th arrondissement has been mostly known for its hipster beer garden, La Recyclerie. Perched above the long-quiet rails of the Petite Ceinture – an abandoned circular railway built more than 150 years ago in the centre of Paris – it offers a cafe, stalls and gardening workshops to its mostly gentrified clientele.
But a few hundred metres away, hidden behind a large metro ticket booth, a camp has taken shape. The 19-mile belt of Petite Ceinture has been derelict for several decades and its possible redevelopment has long sparked debate among environmentalists and entrepreneurs. Then, shortly after , the squatter’s camp took root. “I know there is a Roma camp just a few minutes walk from La Recyclerie, I think it is just straight down the rails,” says one of the cafe’s bartenders, “but I’ve never been there, nor said hello.”
The poster claimed the image shared was taken in Los Angeles, California — presumably in 2019. However, the photograph shared depicted a camp for Roma people on the outskirts of Paris taken in 2015, showing the effects not of socialism or the Silicon Valley, but social inequality and entrenched racism against a historically marginalized ethnic group.