Not Facebook Again! Debunking Facebook Hoaxes
Most of time, I hate my Facebook account. It pretty much does the same thing that my email does, with less filtering out of idiots. The only reason I still have one is because it connects to my fan page. Internet marketing and all of that.
But I keep seeing the same shares, reposts and dire warnings from people who can’t be bothered to put something through Snopes before they paste it on their wall. These ‘warning posts’ are designed to incite mass panics, or just get viral shares, from someone who has too much time on their hands. So, let me dispel a few popular Facebook share myths for you.
Drug Soaked Business Cards
I love this one, because a simple application of basic logic could clear up any confusion.
The story starts off with some girl at a gas station. She meets a man who paints houses. She takes his business card just to be nice. As she leaves the gas station, she starts to get dizzy. The dude from the gas station starts following her in his car. She feels faint and realizes that something might have happened. She pulled up at a house and starts pounding on the horn. The house owners come out and the bad guy drives off. The girl later learns that the business card was soaked with burundanga (a drug similar to the date rape drug) that is used to incapacitate potential victims before the criminals rob or rape them.
Now, I’m not going to get into the basic science of this. Namely, that there is no drug that could immediately incapacitate someone without being injected, eaten or directly inhaled. I’m not going to point out that there has never been one confirmed case of ‘business card’ attack. What I am going to point out is basic logic.
If the drug on the business card is so strong, how the hell is the criminal handing them out in the first place? Think about it. The girl gets the card and starts feeling sick a few seconds after getting it. But the guy who made the card, who drove to the fucking gas station with the card, and then walked up to the girl and handed her the card, didn’t pass out himself? What was he doing, wearing a hazmat suit and carrying the thing around with a set of uranium tongs?
This story has been around since 2008. What hasn’t been found is an actual case of it happening. I will tell you that burundanga (aka Devil’s Breath) is 100% real; however, criminals usually slip it into someone’s food or lace it into a cigarette. It doesn’t work like chloroform, and even chloroform doesn’t work the way described in the story.
The Facebook Legal Notice
I hate this one because it keeps making me get unfriended through no fault of my own. When people unfriend me, I like it to be because of something I did, not because I refused to participate in a completely ineffective chain mail campaign.
The basis of this one is that you need to post some kind of ‘legal notice’ on your Facebook wall to protect your privacy and copyright. If you don’t Facebook will use all your stuff however they see fit. It usually comes with a threat from friends who state ‘if you don’t post this, I’m going to have to unfriend you because my stuff might show up on your page with no legal notice on it.”
Understand copyright people. Once you make it, you own it. That’s copyright. Any disclaimers you see are not legally binding contracts. They’re reminders.
Once you sign up for a Facebook account, you agree to their terms. That means you follow their privacy and copyright policy. You CANNOT unilaterally (meaning on your own) change a contract with someone just by posting something on your wall.
Let me put it in simpler terms. You buy a car. You sign a contract with your bank to make payments. A few weeks later, you decide you don’t like those terms. You write your own new contract. You mail it to the bank.
A bank executive later uses it as toilet paper. Why? Because you can’t unilaterally change a contract. You must have consent from the contracting party.
Also, when you sign up, you’ll notice that you own the information that you post on the site. Facebook already agrees with that. The fact that they made themselves a publicly traded company has absolutely nothing to do with copyright laws. They can’t use your image to make money and they can’t steal your posts. The contract does not change just because the form of the company does. All that changes is who you sue if they violate that contract.
Keep Facebook Free!
These pop up ever now and then. “Facebook is going to start charging you money for your account. Look, this excel spreadsheet shows a grid of how much it will cost per month. Sign our petition, go to this site, blah, blah, blah.”
Most likely, if you’ve opened one of these, you’ve opened and installed a bunch of viruses and malware on your computer. Why? Because Facebook has no intention of charging a fee. They’re already successful. They have more people using them than any other social media site in the world. They make billions in advertising alone. They aren’t going to fuck with the formula by charging people.
This rumor pops up every time Facebook offers a new add on feature. Right now, it’s making a comeback because Facebook is testing out a new advertising program to promote posts. This is a beta advertising program, similar to Facebook ads, which you have to pay for. It’s a completely optional service for advertising. Facebook has explicitly stated that they will keep the site free. If you don’t believe me, check out the site itself.
Before you share something on Facebook, check to make sure it’s not a hoax. A lot of these hoaxes have been around for a very long time. The ‘pay for Facebook’ one has been around since Facebook started. Snopes is an excellent resource to find out if something is true, because they actually go to the trouble of researching sources. Don’t play into mass panic. If it sounds like a delusional rant from your great grandfather with a slight case of dementia, chances are, it is.
