There was certainly no shortage of misinformation online fooling the masses during 2015.
From stories about Mark Zuckerberg giving away millions of dollars, to the tale a woman suing a man who rescued her from drowning. From an alarming warning about HIV infected oranges to… well, Donald Trump.
2015 on the Internet was… for lack of a better phrase, full of it.
Here we list the most popular rumours we debunked during the year…
It was only in February of 2015 that the viral rumour of HIV infected oranges coming from Libya went viral across social media, alarming orange fans across the world. The rumour claimed that a batch of oranges infected with HIV and AIDs were stopped by Algerian immigration services.
The rumour was false. No news reports told of such a story and the author of the message apparently didn’t know that neither HIV nor AIDs can survive outside of the human body for more than a few minutes. We debunked the rumour here.
Rumours about HIV tainted products are a popular type of Internet hoax. Just ask the social media team over at Pepsi.
Satire – or at least subtle satire – has been responsible for plenty of crossed wires in 2015, and no satirical piece has duped so many as the story of a woman “feminist” apparently suing the man who rescued her from drowning… for rape.
Initially going viral across the ‘Interwebs’ in June 2015, an excerpt from the piece included –
He took control of my body down there in the cold water, when I was unconscious and unable to look out for myself, he touched my all-but-bikini bare body when I was KNOCKED out and unable to struggle.
Originally published by the Stately Harold website, many took the story at face value, failing to see that it was really just a satirical take on what many dub faux-feminism, and there was no grain of truth to it whatsoever. Not that this stopped the author “Cassidy Boon” from really trolling her readers with a few YouTube videos.
Are we approaching 15 days of darkness, according to NASA? No – but this didn’t stop this re-occurring hoax from really taking off in 2015, of which the most popular version claimed 15 days of darkness was to be expected in November, but other months were included in less popular variants.
No such news was ever announced by NASA, which would – of course – be printed all over the mainstream media. It wasn’t, but this didn’t stop the circulation of this hoax throughout 2015, especially in July and October.
Our sister site ThatsFake.com debunked it here.
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Actually, in September 2015, this rumour came awfully close to coming true… sort of, but it didn’t. Most people know about the tale of Kim Davis, the country clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, in spite of a newly imposed federal law insisting that she must.
She went to jail, where she spent several days and finally upon her release she left to the tune of “Eye of a Tiger” and was greeted by US presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee.
Survivor, the group behind the song, were not so happy about this, since they didn’t support Kim Davis’s cause, and threatened legal action for using their song without permission. Whether there was any behind-the-scenes settlement, we don’t know… but many fake news websites jumped the gun and claimed Survivor has sued for $1.2 million. They hadn’t.
ThatsFake.com debunked the story here.
After the tragic events in Paris on November 2015, plenty of nonsense was being shared online, including the photo apparently showing band Eagles of Death Metal at the Bataclan moments before the shooting took place.
Whilst a video of the shooting did exist, the photo actually shows the band playing in Ireland shortly before travelling to Paris for that ill-fated gig.
We discussed a number of the Paris hoaxes here.
It’s fair to say that Donald Trump has had his fair share of press during the latter half of 2015, and plenty of it hasn’t exactly been flattering. So it was inevitable that a few mistruths were going to be shared across social media.
And that is exactly what did happen in December 2015 when a sign – apparently written on a TfL sign by staff there – welcomed people of all faiths, except Donald Trump who could… apparently, ‘do one’.
It was of course in response to his controversial remarks about banning Muslims from the United States. However the sign wasn’t written by TfL at all, it was created by a prank website that allows visitors to create any message and make it appear as if it was on the TfL board. The user who actually penned the message and uploaded it to social media is unknown.
Perhaps the last mega-viral hoax to spread in 2015, this one enjoyed a great deal of success in December 2015 and demonstrated a perfect example of social media users spreading utter nonsense “just in case” it might be true… something we’ll hopefully see less of in 2016.
Whilst the news that Zuckerberg pledged 99% of his shares in Facebook to good causes during his lifetime is true, what wasn’t true is that 10% of that $45 billion jackpot was going to end up in the hands of 1000 lucky Facebook users who copied and shared a Facebook message.
Claims that this was “confirmed” on “the news”, “Good Morning America” and even “The View” helped the hoax go from strength to strength, but alas, it was still totally bogus.
