On Monday, two hoaxes started flooding Facebook and thousands of people jumped on the bandwagon, posting status updates across the social media outlet.
These hoaxes and the response of social media users brought Facebook to its knees, resulting in a brief outage on Monday afternoon.
The first hoax claimed that it was necessary to post a paragraph of legal jargon to your Facebook page. It was claimed that posting it would protect you by having Facebook user information free of copyright infringement.
“As of September 28th , 2015 at 10:50p.m. Eastern standard time, I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information, or posts, both past and future. By this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of privacy can be punished by law (UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103 and the Rome Statute). NOTE: Facebook is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you prefer, you can copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once it will be tactically allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in the profile status updates.”
This first hoax has been debunked by Facebook in the past.
The second hoax had to do with Facebook charging a subscription fee in the near future. It was stated that the only way to avoid this difficulty was to post another long message to your page.
“FACEBOOK JUST RELEASED THEIR PRICE GRID FOR MEMBERSHIP. $9.99 PER MONTH FOR GOLD MEMBER SERVICES, $6.99 PER MONTH FOR SILVER MEMBER SERVICES, $3.99 PER MONTH FOR BRONZE MEMBER SERVICES, FREE IF YOU COPY AND PASTE THIS MESSAGE BEFORE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. WHEN YOU SIGN ON TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL BE PROMPTED FOR PAYMENT INFO… IT IS OFFICIAL IT WAS EVEN ON THE NEWS. FACEBOOK WILL START CHARGING DUE TO THE NEW PROFILE CHANGES. IF YOU COPY THIS ON YOUR WALL YOUR ICON WILL TURN BLUE AND FACEBOOK WILL BE FREE FOR YOU. PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON IF NOT YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED IF YOU DO NOT PAY!”
This is also a hoax, and it has been debunked by Snopes as being false as well.
It is important to be cautious about these hoaxes on Facebook. These two hoaxes caused problems, not only for Facebook but also for anyone that was trying to use it during the time it was down!