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William Shatner Criticizes Facebook Hoax Ad Announcing His Death (people.com)
"William Shatner is alive and well -- in fact, he turned 87 on Thursday, so the actor was not pleased when he saw an ad on Facebook sharing a story about his alleged death," writes the Hollywood Reporter. An anonymous reader quotes People:
"@WilliamShatner I thought you might want to know you're dead," a Twitter user wrote, along with a screenshot of the ad. Less than a half hour later, Shatner posted his own message calling out the social media company for spreading the phony news... "Thought you were doing something about this?" he wrote. Several hours after Shatner's tweet, Facebook's director of product management Rob Leathern messaged the actor to let him know that the ad had been removed. "Thank you," Shatner replied. "I'm not planning on dying so please continue to block those kinds of ads..." Fortunately, Shatner's in good company when it comes to celebrity death hoaxes... News of Sylvester Stallone's fake death originally began circulating on Facebook in 2016.
In late 2016 Mark Zuckerberg posted that "We take misinformation seriously..." while adding that "we know people want accurate information. We've been working on this problem for a long time and we take this responsibility seriously." Ironically, that announcement appeared next to a similar fake ad announcing that Hugh Hefner was dead, though at the time Hefner was very much alive.
"We've made significant progress," Zuckerberg's post continued, "but there is more work to be done."
In late 2016 Mark Zuckerberg posted that "We take misinformation seriously..." while adding that "we know people want accurate information. We've been working on this problem for a long time and we take this responsibility seriously." Ironically, that announcement appeared next to a similar fake ad announcing that Hugh Hefner was dead, though at the time Hefner was very much alive.
"We've made significant progress," Zuckerberg's post continued, "but there is more work to be done."
With Facebook's resources they should already have algorithms that can roughly pinpoint who started the hoax, ID them and publicly castigate them or ban them.
Or even better, the originators just get a notice saying "Facebook Legal has determined that you are one of the first/most influential sharers of this hoax. All information about this defamatory post has been preserved in the event that the target wishes to pursue legal action."
I think that would cause enough puckering sphincters to start changing attitudes.
"We take misinformation seriously..." unless it leads to ad revenue.
Any and all currencies accepted. Thank you.
Erroneously reporting the death of a famous person in various forms of media has been going on a lot longer than Facebook has been around.
Bill Shatner should be pleased that people actually care whether or not he's alive - there are a lot of octogenarian TV & movie stars that when somebody hears their name reply with "I thought they were dead."
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Automation doesn't work. These dumb social media companies, along with online traditional media companies all thought they hit the goldmine because they could automate their advertising platforms, and fire all of their salespeople and advertising copy editors and ad designers. Well, they don't work, and they need to be held responsible for the crap their pushing. I'm so very sorry that they might have to go back to paying humans to do the job of selling advertising, but I doubt there's another good alternative.
I don't respond to AC's.
[insert photo of popular celebrity here]
I think that's how this clickscam works.
"Oh, no, we weren't saying [celebrity] died, that's just an image from the story in which [celebrity] is mentioned. It's actually [celebrity]'s housemaid who died."
...you're dead, Jim!
The last time he died was in Star Trek Generations.