Facebook “Now It’s Official £5.99 entry price” rumour spreads

Rumours are spreading across Facebook that the Internet’s largest social media website is introducing a £5.99 entry price to keep the “subscription gold” status of a user’s account that would need to be paid in order to keep the account private. The rumours also claim that copying and pasting a status will bypass this entry price.

These silly “copy & paste this status to keep your account free” type rumours are older than Facebook itself, with many targeting services like AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo long before Facebook was a mere twinkle in Zuckerberg’s eye.

And this particular rumour, which you can see below, was debunked when it first appeared in 2013. Originally appearing in French, it was soon poorly translated into English using what we imagine must have been a less-than-stellar translation tool.

Now it’s official! It is published in the media. Facebook has just released his entry price: € 5,99 to keep the subscription gold of your status of life “private”. If you paste this message on your page, it will be offered free (I said paste not share) if not tomorrow, all your posts can become public. Even the messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed. After all, it does not cost anything for a simple copy and paste



[in French…]


C’est maintenant officiel! C’est apparu dans les médias. Facebook vient de sortir son prix d’entrée : 5,99€ pour garder l’abonnement gold et votre statut de vie ´´privée ´´ Si vous collez ce message sur votre page, il sera offert gratuitement. J’ai dit coller pas partager! :o) Sinon demain, toutes vos publications peuvent devenir publiques. Même les messages qui ont été supprimés ou les photos non autorisées. Après tout, cela ne coûte rien pour un simple copier coller!!

The claim that Facebook are making all of your posts public unless you pay or copy and paste a status is beyond asinine. Why posting a specific message would allow your account to avoid paying some sort of “entry price” simply doesn’t make any sense.

In fact it is just a rehashed version of a myriad of other similar messages that claim you can copy and paste some arbitrary post to avoid paying a charge, including the rumours of an upcoming “price grid membership” as well as the “turn your icon blue” version, which has been spreading since at least 2009.

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This particular rumour also has other variants for other countries, with the entry price changed from £5.99 to €5.99 or $9.99, depending on what country it happens to be spreading in.

Why these types of silly rumours continue to enjoy so much success as they’re passed between user to user without any kind of verification or at least critical thinking is bizarre, and yet another illustration of how many users are willing to post rumours just in case they they’re true – a justification we thoroughly “unjustify” in our article on 12 reasons not to spread rumours on the Internet.

Please stop passing on nonsense that is clearly, blatantly nonsense, if not for any other reason than they make you look quite foolish.

UPDATE: Some bright spark has appended this rumour onto the long running “privacy notice” hoax that claims copying and pasting some legal sounding nonsense somehow prevents people from doing things with the information you upload onto Facebook. That too is nonsense, and we reported on it a while ago.