Is Mark Zuckerberg giving $4.5 million for copying a message?

A message is spreading across Facebook that claims Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is giving away 10% of his $45billion charity pledge to certain Facebook users if they copy and paste a message to their Facebook statuses.

It is true that earlier in 2015 Mark Zuckerberg became a dad for the first time and pledged to give away 99% of his Facebook shares – estimated at around $45 billion – to charitable causes over the course of his lifetime.

However claims made in the message below that 10% of that pledge is going to Facebook users as a thankyou for using Facebook are false. The message claims that once you copy and paste the message and tag 5 friends into the status, Facebook will choose 1000 users to win $4.5millon each.

I thought it was a hoax at first but saw this on Good Morning America and the news so I’ll share the post for a cut….
Thank you Mark Zuckerberg for your forward thinking generosity! And congrats on becoming a dad! 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 and tag 5-10 of your friends. At midnight PST Facebook will search through the days posts 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 and philanthropy.I hope someone I know gets a piece of the pie- let me know if you do !!! I dont usually do this but hey it’s worth a try!!!!!

A slightly adapted version of the rumour spread in 2017, this time omitting the news that Zuckerberg had just became a dad –

Can’t wait to see who the lucky recipients are…According to Good Morning America, Not a hoax! Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he is giving away $45 billon 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.
Like, copy and paste!!
What the hell, worth a shot!
Why not… cant win if you dont play. Give it a try???

The rumour is just another variant of an almost endless string of “copy and paste to win” type hoaxes that claim copying and pasting a status to your timeline will give you a chance of winning something. Despite the claims in the message, it did not appear on Good Morning America or the news (unless they were dismissing it as a hoax.)

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Not only is it false, it doesn’t make sense. Why do Facebook users need to share the above message specifically in order to stand a chance to win? That notion would suggest that the message was penned by Facebook themselves (as opposed to a random person) in which case why is Facebook and Zuckerberg referred to in the third person? Are we to believe that it is Mark Zuckerberg effectively thanking himself?

Additionally, such claims are never true since Facebook ban promotions that involve users sharing content to their own personal timelines, so it is unlikely that Facebook would run a promotion that requires users to do just that. Hoaxers often instruct Facebook users to share content on their own timelines and tag their friends because this helps the hoax spread across the website.

The rumour exploits the genuine news about Zuckerberg becoming a dad and making a charitable pledge to increase its believability, but it is ultimately just a hoax.