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Tuesday 29 December 2015

Mark Zuckerberg is not giving away his fortune to random members


You're not going to get a penny by sharing a widely-circulated post claiming Mark Zuckerberg plans to give 1,000 users $4.5 million (£3 million) each.
Facebook users are being encouraged to share a short message beginning with: "THANK YOU, MARK ZUCKERBERG", claiming the company's founder is planning to give away 10 per cent of his $45 billion fortune to regular Facebook members.
In typical social media hoax format, like the chain emails that preceded it, Facebook users are told to share the message themself in order to qualify for the 1,000-person giveaway.
And like all good Facebook scams, it's grounded in an element of truth. Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan recently announced that they plan to give away 99 per cent of their Facebook stock - worth around $45 billion - to good causes to "advance human potential".
The couple made the announcement in an open letter alongside the birth of their first child, Max. But according to the hoax message, what they didn't mention was that a tenth of this will go to randomly-selected Facebook users who share the message.
The hoax appeared to pick up steam over the weekend after Christmas. But in fact, it has been around for weeks, and Facebook itself debunked it three weeks ago.
"Friends don't let friends copy and paste memes. While Priscilla and Mark's pledge to give money to improve the world is real, not everything you read on the internet is, and they're not giving it away randomly," the company said.
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to have stopped people. But at least we have got a few memes out of it:

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