A viral mish-mash of Facebook hoaxes is doing the social media rounds, so we’re just briefly revisiting this hoax (or hoaxes) in another hopeful but likely futile bid to put it to bed once and for all.
If you want to give yourself a migraine, or perhaps you have a glutton for punishment, or you just haven’t had a chance to face palm yourself today, then you could trying giving the below message a read.
Facebook tried to access my payment information so I realize this is for real.
I’m Opting Out too!
So now they are doing it, just announced on Channel 4 News. Facebook is charging all users starting Monday. You can do an opt-out by doing this. Hold your finger over this message and copy it. It can’t be shared. I do not give permission for Facebook to charge $4.99 a month to my account, also; all my pictures are my property of mine and NOT Facebook’s!!! Opt-out Special thanks to Larry for this legal advice… and to Tim Barker for posting this information:
Due to the fact everyone is slowly getting hi-jacked, yeah hi-jacked not hacked, they’re flat out hi-jacking our accounts, even more now.
Just in case Notice: An attorney advised us to post this. The violation of privacy can be punished by law. NOTE: Facebook Meta is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you do not publish a statement at least once, it will be technically understood that you are allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in your profile status updates.
I HEREBY STATE THAT I DO NOT GIVE FACEBOOK META MY PERMISSION TO USE ANY OF MY PERSONAL DATA OR PHOTOS.
Copy and paste, do not share. I am getting more sales ad posts than friends’ posts. Hold your finger anywhere in this post and click ′′ copy “. Go to your page where it says “What’s on your mind.” Tap your finger anywhere in the blank field. Click paste. This upgrades the system.
That hurt our head. It’s almost as if we could physically feel our brain cells withering away with each word in this hodgepodge of non-sequitur nonsense. It’s like a word search of hoaxes, clumsily affixed together in a meaningless jumble of letters, ostensibly designed to raise the blood pressure of anyone in the fact checking business.
That is to say, it’s obviously a load of tosh. But where to begin?
Well, this is actually a pastiche of at least three different hoaxes. It starts out with the archaic “Facebook is charging” hoax (they’re not) then dives straight into the “Facebook privacy notice” hoax that claims you can prevent Facebook from doing certain things with your photos if you post a legal sounding notice to your profile (you can’t), then there is some vague inference to “hi-jacking” which is possibly a reference to Facebook cloning scams (though we can’t be sure) and then the message winds things down with the claim you can see less sales ads and more friend’s posts by copying and pasting a notice to your profile (needless to say, no you can’t.)
There isn’t really much need expanding each point on this post here since we’ve discussed each one in much depth elsewhere on our website.
No, Facebook isn’t charging users a £4.99 fee, and even if they were, you wouldn’t be able to simply opt out by copying a message. Such nonsense has been spreading for decades, often claiming the story has been covered by various news channels. Our main article on this hoax is here.
Sponsored Content. Continued below…
Next up, does copying a legal notice to your profile going to prevent Facebook from owning your pictures? No, of course not. Your photos on Facebook remain your property, not Facebook’s. The exact terms what Facebook can do with your data is governed mostly by the social media platform’s terms and conditions, which you agreed to when you created an account. You cannot override those terms after-the-fact with some ad hoc privacy notice. Again, this has been spreading for years and we’ve covered it’s various iterations here.
The message makes some inference to hi-jacking but it’s not clear exactly what. Possibly this is about Facebook cloning scams, which we discuss here.
Finally, no you cannot see less sales ads or posts from more friends by posting a message to your profile, much less this nonsense. Doing so doesn’t “upgrade the system” or “bypass the algorithm” or whatever pseudo-techie phrases the author has up their sleeves. Again, we discuss this is more detail here.
For the collective health of the people around you, please don’t expose anyone to this mind mindbogglingly banal rubbish. Every word that isn’t entirely incoherent is complete garbage. And recycled garbage at that.