The first sign that something you’re reading on the internet is not what it seems is if the words “this is totally legit” or “this is definitely not a hoax, you guys” can be found. And yet, despite that simple rule, every few months our feeds become inundated with a new hoax with those exact words being passed around as a fun new way to get rich quickly.
The latest example comes courtesy of Mark Zuckerberg, the lovable philanthropist and head of Facebook. You may recall earlier this month, he announced a plan where he and his wife would donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares to various charities over the course of their lifetimes, a dollar figure that currently amounts to approximately $45 billion.
Well, it took less than a month, but apparently a fun prankster modified Zuckerberg’s words just a bit to indicate that the money would instead be dispersed to 1,000 lucky Facebook users. The statement being passed around has been a variation of something like this:
According to Good Morning America, this is NOT A HOAX! 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 percent 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 posts and award 1,000 people with $4.5 million each as a way of saying thank you for making Facebook such a powerful vehicle for connection.
To recap, reading “this is not a hoax” is the very first sign that something is a hoax. The second sign is if someone wants to give you a boatload of money for absolutely no reason. That simply doesn’t happen, folks.