Over the past few days, we’ve seen a number of our Facebook friends posting an old alarmist status message that goes:
“Better to be safe than sorry. An attorney advised us to post this. The violation of privacy can be punished by law (UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103 and the Rome Statute). NOTE: Facebook is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you do not publish a statement at least once, it will be tacitly understood that you are allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in your profile status updates. I hereby state that I do not give my persmission. If you prefer, you can copy and paste.”
News flash: This is a Facebook hoax that has been going on for years. But, apparently, people repost it because it “sounds official.” It even cites the so-called “UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103 and the Rome Statute.”
By now, we know that the hoax hasn’t just spread among Filipino Facebook users. Apprently, it has spread among Facebook users all over the world.
If love is a universal language, then gullibility is also a universal language.
As the Inquisitr pointed out: “The Uniform Commercial Code, or UCC, is not law. It is a model code meant to standardize international commerce and has nothing to do with social media sites such as Facebook. The Rome Statute is an international treaty that was established to deal with war criminals and is in no way relevant to your Facebook user experience.”
In June this year, Facebook once again had to issue this statement: “You may have seen a post telling you to copy and paste a notice to retain control over things you share on Facebook. Don’t believe it. You own your content and can control how it is shared through your privacy settings.”
Now, it’s a few months later and the hoax is alive and well.
We’d like to believe that telling people to think before they repost things will actually put a stop to the hoax. However, reality has proven over and over again that this is never the case.
