Facebook has often been used by some to trick users with hoax offers and deals from various companies, but recently there has been a post circulating claiming that Mark Zuckerberg will give 10% of his Facebook stake to “people like you and me” if a user shares the status on their wall. If you come across any such post, don’t trust it; it’s a hoax.
Follows Facebook CEO’s charity announcement
The post follows the announcement by Facebook’s CEO in late November that he and his wife Priscilla will donate almost all their Facebook shares. The hoax started a few weeks ago and comes in several variations now. Such posts claim that Zuckerberg will give $4.5 million to 1,000 Facebook users, provided they copy and paste a certain status on their profile. And yes, many people are falling for it.
Some of the variations of the post praise Zuckerberg for his “forward-thinking generosity,” while others say that the story has been verified on Good Morning America. Though the TV news program never ran such a story, it did – like many — report on Zuckerberg’s original planned $45 billion donation. One of the variations of the post reads:
“According to Good Morning America, Not a hoax! Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he is giving away $45 billion of Facebook stock. What you may not have heard is that he plans to give 10% of it away to people like YOU and ME!
“All you have to do is copy and paste this message into a post IMMEDIATELY. At midnight PST, Facebook will search through the day’s post and award 1000 people with $4.5 million each as a way of saying thank you for making Facebook such a powerful vehicle for connection.”
How to identify such hoax posts
As of now, it is not clear who posted the original hoax, but Facebook has confirmed to ABC News that the online claims are “untrue.” The company even posted an update on Dec. 9 denying the bogus story.
Even though the company has warned users against such hoaxes, users can look for clues to check if the story is true. As in this case, there were couple of clues indicating something was not right, says ABC News. First, there were several typos in the message that has to be copied. Second, some of the variations said the users who won will be notified with an emoticon.
