An article saying Facebook will start charging $2.99 per month Nov. 1 is fake.
It published on the National Report, a satirical website.
“At a press conference this morning, Facebook rolled out their new monthly service plan which begins November 1st of this year. The social media giant says they will start charging members $2.99/mo to use the services that the site has to offer,” it says.
The article then uses made-up quotes from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The National Report used to have a disclaimer, which says: “National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental.”
But a number of people on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter expressed outrage over the fictional report.
And a few months ago, the website posted a semi-real opinion article about what it’s trying to do.
“Satire is not required to be humorous, nor was this particular post meant to be funny,” it said in an unrelated article. “The people of the modern world need to understand and develop the ability to corroborate information and not just accept information as true without further inputs. Absolutely baseless information is spread by ACTUAL news sources on a daily basis and has resulted in a serious divide within our country,” the article adds.
