A Facebook post is spreading virally across the social media site that purports to show a screenshot of CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreeing to remove presidential candidate Donald Trump from Facebook if that screenshot can accumulate over 500k likes, 50k comments and 20k shares.
The screenshot can be seen below (Update: other versions exist) –
Hey Mark! I doubt you will ever take this seriously or even reply. But how many likes would it take for you to remove Donald Trump from Facebook. I will screenshot and post!
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Hey Callan, that is a pretty strong request you’ve asked. But I will give you this chance. You’ll have to get 500k likes 50k comments and 20k shares. – Mark
Despite the post getting plenty of attention, it is clearly fake. Given that Zuckerberg and Facebook are always closely monitored and often criticised over the controversial subject of freedom of speech and censorship, the chances that the highly-visible CEO will publicly grant the wish of a random Facebook user to remove a presidential candidate (now President-Elect) from Facebook providing a post can accumulate an arbitrary number of social media engagement is, to say the least, highly unlikely.
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In reality this post is a just a twist on the notorious like-farming scheme, whereas the person or page creating the posts intends on using deception to lure people into engaging with their posts and following their page/timeline. Given that in this instance that person is an account named ‘Callan Brown’, (Update: The same screenshot has since been uploaded by further Facebook accounts including one named Gavin Mccaster) a self-professed “Actor/Entertainer/Public Figure” whose posts often seem concerned with attracting new followers, it doesn’t take too much detective work to conclude that this is just another technique the account is using to attract new followers. We did notice that Callan Brown conveniently included an invitation to “follow him for updates“, of course.
Learn more about like-farming here.
A cursory glance of Facebook reveals that this isn’t the first time this twist on like-farming has been used either. Below is another fake claim – this time from a page claiming to represent Lamborghini – spot the similarities.
So despite how much you may dislike Trump, Facebook isn’t going to remove him just because a random post gets over a certain amount of likes or shares. That is really never, ever going to happen.
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