Another day, another Facebook hoax on the loose.
Lately, there have been a string of Facebook hoaxes/rumors/whatever you want to call them running rampant causing the most trusting people to fall for them.
Today, this was the viral post…
“In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal and corporate drawings, specifications, details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention). For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times! (Anyone reading this can copy this text and paste it on their Facebook Wall. This will place them under protection of copyright laws. By the present communiqué, I notify Facebook that it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, disseminate, or take any other action against me on the basis of this profile and/or its contents. The aforementioned prohibited actions also apply to employees, students, agents and/or any staff under Facebook’s direction or control. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of my privacy is punished by law (UCC 1 1-308-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute).
Facebook is now an open capital entity. All members are recommended to publish a notice like this, or if you prefer, you may copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once, you will be tacitly allowing the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile status updates.”
Within 5 minutes of finding out this wasn’t true, I saw at least 5 different pages and profiles posting this message. Of course, I kindly mentioned this wasn’t real and provided a link to mashable.com’s article about this very hoax.
A month ago, this was the viral hoax…
“Since Facebook is not requiring administrators to pay to promote their pages, only 10% of page fans receive the updates we post here. To receive ALL of our posts, please do the following:
1) Go to our page.
2) Hover your mouse over where it says “LIKED” and click on “Add to Interests Lists”.
3) Commenting or clicking “like” on our page every once in a while will also keep us on your feed.”
Wow. Many of my peers and I were furious about this one. First of all, Facebook is NOT requiring anyone to pay for anything. I saw at least 10 pages post this within 2 hours of this going viral. My friends at Media Barista issued a GREAT blog post in response to this. I encourage you to read it HERE.
So why all these rumors and hoaxes? Why are people running for hills and acting like Chicken Little? People thrive on the here and now. People trust what they read before researching the facts. As soon as either of these were posted you could have googled it and found out it wasn’t true.
Yes, people base a lot of their decision on peer influence and if you see 5 or 10 of your favorite pages or friends posting this stuff, sure, you’re going to believe it. Not everything you read on the internet is true. Speaking of which, watch this State Farm commercial – it fits perfectly:
http://memarketingservices.com://youtu.be/rmx4twCK3_I
Okay, I’m not saying everything isn’t true, but PLEASE, if you see something this either of these posts above posted several times over a short period of time, do your homework before sharing. People are watching what you post – trusted friends, clients and prospective customers. Believe me, your credibility is relying on it.
Anyone want to take a guess at what the next great social media hoax will be?
The next hoax? Facebook is shutting down, maybe…
thanks for the reminder… they`ll continue, however, it`s prudent to be aware! great article!
Has the hoax that FB is going to make us all pay to have our accounts gone around yet? 🙂 There are so many un-truths going around on FB and other sites. I tune out most everything but personal accounts my friends share about their daily lives. Thank you for dispelling those recent myths. I’ll send my friends here instead of mashable!
I saw this on face book and you are right, when you see something several times you wonder if there is any truth to it! Thanks for setting the record straight!
Why do people go through all of the trouble to spread these rumors? It’s so frustrating! The second one you mentioned I saw at least 100 times!
Always amazes me how people can be so bored that they start the rumor mill up and just watch it spin. The worst part is that people buy into them without checking out whether they are really true!
Thanks Mandy for the info. It’s too easy to believe these when you see them. So grateful for my social media manager friends that keep me on the right path!
Great post! I’m always surprised to see so many people buy into these without checking them out!
I have been getting numerous hoaxes through Twitter. I believe most often we can sit for a minute and just follow our instincts about bull like this. It isn’t hard to pick up on falsities…like you said, check it out,,we need to stop acting like sheep going to slaughter!
I’m guilty of one of the hoax posts … I’ll check on your site next time for verification. Thanks.
Thanks Mandy. It drives me crazy to see rumors and crap post flying around out there. LOL I never repost these.. 😉
Thanks for this
important reminder about Facebook hoaxes. People tend to believe everything
they see on the internet and this reminder will surely help them to do the
homework first before sharing. And I love the commercial! Lol.
It’s funny how easy it is to find out if it’s a hoax or not using Snopes or google and yet it’s been going around for years.
It’s funny to receive a lot of these Mandy. You’re so right! People should be vigilant enough not to believe everything they see on the internet. It’s just daunting to see that some people have the time to make up something like that and watch others go crazy over it! Suppose we’ll just have to continue to do our homework on the subject moving forward =)
I am trying to understand what motivates people to glom onto the fantastic – or at least suspect – as a true item. Everything from attributing witty writings to celebrities to uber-patriotic snippets seem to be “shared” or “liked” by people…professional people…people I’ve worked with and known for years, who fall for this stuff. I don’t wanna be the SNOPES cop, but there’s a part of me that wants to say, really, did you honestly think that was true? Sometimes I get the ‘doesn’t matter, just thought it was cute’ response to the ‘heh, heh, yeah I knew’ (which I find suspect as well). Maybe it’s just me. Maybe the whole point of FB is to gen traffic regardless of credibility. But I also don’t have what it takes to share some suspect posting. How is this s’posed to work?
I’ve seen these types of posts before, and I also saw them few times last year, and probably in 2012 as well. It’s funny how people will repost these rumors without a second thought. If Facebook were really going to start paying for its services, you would already know about it because you would get an email about it. Anyway, if you see a post like this, kill it before it spreads further.