Facebook Privacy Hoax Once Again Makes Its Rounds Online
Another Facebook privacy hoax has once again made its rounds online, prompting many users to copy and paste the message on their walls in a panicked bid to preserve their privacy rights.
In "The Last Week Tonight," host John Oliver debunked the latest Facebook privacy hoax to surface, saying the copy-and-pasted statuses do not mean anything. He posted a video on Facebook to explain why putting up the copied status will not do anything to users' privacy rights, according to Tech Times.
Most of the social media users want Facebook to respect people's privacy, but only a handful truly read the terms of service agreements provided for them, the report adds.
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The viral Facebook privacy declaration begins with a statement saying the user does not give Facebook permission to disclose or distribute any content found in the account. Rey Junco, an associate faculty member at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, says those who were deceived by the hoax are the individuals who are paranoid and who lack knowledge about social media, CNN reports.
"Just because you say something in the voice of a southern debutante does not make it legally binding," Tech Times quotes Oliver's statement in the video.
Oliver explained that the posts incorrectly use the "Rome Statute" that was derived from a treaty, which created the International Criminal Court. He also created his own hoax by advising Facebook users to post his video on their own profiles to protect their content from the social platform. As a joke, he said the Social Media Profile Copyright Act of 1934 says Oliver is "the most powerful legal weapon available to you," the report relays.
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg must have loved Oliver's humorous video because he "liked" the post.
The first Facebook privacy hoax surfaced on the social platform a few years ago and has repeatedly cropped up, despite efforts to debunk it. Zuckerberg himself released a statement confirming that the privacy declarations are just a hoax and that Facebook will always be free.
