It’s been an incredibly busy start to 2017, with plenty of fakes news and hoaxes circulating the interwebs in the first few weeks of the year, many related to phantom Facebook threats, the Trump inauguration, plenty of social media like-farming and some old classics make a return.
Let’s take a look at what was popular this month.
Trump
It was perhaps no surprise that there was going to be plenty of misinformation spreading online concerning the inauguration of the US’s latest president, Donald Trump. Things kicked off with rather trivial matters, with much controversy surrounding the size of the inauguration crowd that turned up to see Trump take the oath of office. This was fuelled by unfounded remarks from press secretary Sean Spicer that Trump had the most people turn up to a US inauguration in history (period) – something that seems pretty unlikely when the facts came to light.
Trump may not have had the largest inauguration crowd in history, and he also didn’t plagiarise his inauguration speech from popular movies either, as baseless rumours floating around claimed he borrowed lines from both Bee Movie and Avatar, which turned out to be false. Further rumours that he quoted Bane from the Batman movie were also rather tenuous, since it was only a few words paraphrased that both men shared.
Obama
Obama didn’t escape the onslaught of fake news either, with a fake image purportedly showing him with his hand on Melania Trump’s backside also spreading across social media websites.
Phantom Facebook warnings
More baseless warnings surrounding privacy spread with one rumour claiming that typing in “Facebook Security” in the “Block” section of your Facebook account revealed nefarious Facebook accounts that were “spying” on you. The fact that that notion was totally illogical didn’t stop thousands sharing it regardless, but we discussed it here.
A classic gets a revival for 2017
When will people stop believing that Facebook is about to start charging their users? That’s the question we were asking in the first week of 2017 as yet another permutation of this classic hoax went viral that claimed Facebook were going to introduce a charge starting from “Saturday morning”. An identical version also spread targeting WhatsApp users.
Not only that, but an older permutation of the same “Facebook is charging” hoax also spread in January claiming that “Carlos” from Facebook announced the imminent charge.
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Some of our popular articles included –
Why do hoax posts ask you to copy and paste (as opposed to sharing them?) – We take a look at why those viral Facebook posts always ask you to copy and paste them.
The most abhorrent like-farming post on Facebook? We look at what may be the most abhorrent Facebook like-farming profile
Are websites imploring you to post links on the Internet legitimate or scams?
My friend on Facebook got their account hacked, am I at risk? – Does a friends hacked account put you at risk, and if so, how?