Unfortunately, rumors, hoaxes, and lies are part of who we are. Falsehoods are an inevitable consequence of human communication.
In the past, these false ideas might have spread around saloons, marketplaces, and town squares. Today, people don't need a physical gathering spot to trade (potentially false) news and gossip, it can all happen from the comfort of your mobile device. And even though our communication technologies have rapidly evolved, we have not.
Surely you've seen these hoaxes in your Facebook News Feed: posts about celebrities, politicians, or Facebook itself that seem too good (or too awful) to be true. Or, at the very least, they are too whatever to not share with the rest of your Facebook friends. To battle this phenomenon, Facebooks this week introduced an initiative to allow users to highlight these false posts, which will help the company spot them and thus stop the spread of these outright lies.
What type of things are we talking about? Check out some of the hoaxes that have made the rounds on Facebook throughout the years:
1. Facebook Will Start Charging for Access?
No, Facebook is not going to charge for access to the site anytime soon. The company makes its money by drawing as many eyeballs into the site as possible and then pummeling them with ads.
But for some reason, this persistent false rumor manages to keep popping up. It's usually in the form of an ALL CAPS post detailing this startling news while promising to spare users who share the post for others to see—and thus a hoax fire is born.
2. Fake Ebola Scares
Not that the national news media needed any help from social media fomenting panic about the coming Ebola tide—but it got it. At the height of the scare, a heroically unfunny "fake news site" called The National Report posted a false story about a family in Texas who was infected by the disease. The story garnered hundreds of thousands of likes and shares and (perhaps because the site boasts a realish-sounding name like "The National Report"), it was passed on as a true report by many.
While The Onion—the founding father of fake news—can sometimes publish stories that seem real, the "story" is usually allowed to spin out of control so that it couldn't possibly be mistaken for anything but satire. However, there has been a recent crop of mostly unfunny fake news sites that exist only to fool people via social media shares, while ostensibly claiming humor as their raison d'etre. They suck.
3. Facebook Owns the Copyrights on Your Information
We've seen this one a few times. Most recently, there has been one variation going around claiming that Facebook has removed your ownership from your own uploaded content. This is not the case. But if you came across this blockbuster info, you'd probably want to share it, too.
4. "Christmas Tree" App Virus
A few years ago, there was a hoax going around warning users not to download a Christmas tree app to Facebook as it housed a virus. Not that users shouldn't be fearful of downloading buggy software. But, as it turns out, this warning—both the app and the virus—turned out to be completely false.
5. Facebook Video Ads Hoax
Like the previously mentioned pay-for-access hoax, there was an official-looking post ostensibly from Mark Zuckerberg claiming that video ads were coming to the site "to increase the profitability of Facebook" and would only stop you from using Facebook "every 10 minutes" to play an ad for 15 to 60 seconds. Just like watching TV! While Facebook has indeed flirted with video ads, there was nothing that would stop you from Facebooking to your heart's content. 'Tis another big lie.
No comments:
Post a Comment