Facebook stays free: Zuckerberg
FACEBOOK CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s video appearing on Facebook Messenger and telling users that he is deleting the social networking site has been spreading online.
Together with the video is Zuckerberg’s alleged message telling users to send the instruction to 18 people to enjoy a free Facebook access. It also stated that failure to share the message means payment to access the account.
Here is the message that created panic among Facebook users:
“Hi, I’m Mark Zuckerberg, the Director of Facebook... We require that our active users forward this message to each of the people in your contact list in order to confirm our active Facebook users. If you do not send this message to all your Facebook contacts, then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of losing all your contacts without the transmission of this message. Your smartphone will be updated within the next 24 hours, will have a new design, and a new color for the chat.”
But Facebook, in its Help Center section, answered “No” to the question “Does it cost money to use Facebook? Is it true that Facebook is going to charge to use the site?”
“Facebook is a free site and will never require that you pay to continue using the site,” it added.
Snopes.com, the oldest and largest fact-checking site and widely regarded
by journalists, folklorists, and laypersons alike as one of the world’s essential resources, said such message is not new, adding it was also able to check it in September 2017.
Zuckerberg, in his testimony before the US Congress recently, also confirmed that “there will always be a version of Facebook that is free.”
He said though that in order not to run ads on the social media feed, “we would need some sort of business model. To be clear, we don’t offer an
option today for people to pay to not show ads. We think offering people an ad-supported service is the most aligned with our mission of trying to connect everyone in the world, because we want to offer a free service that everyone can afford. That’s the only way we can reach billions of people.”
Facebook, Zuckerberg said, relies on advertising to continue the free platform.
In 2010, an alleged advisory told Facebook users that the social networking site will be charging $4.99 monthly for users continued use of the platform.
Snopes reported that the messages were found to be just hoaxes, saying others used the messages as a trigger to initiate a script that hijacked users’ computers, while some is to lure clicks that will install malwares onto computers. (MVG)