Fact Check: Facebook outage: Mark Zuckerberg is not foraying into cryptocurrency market
Netizens are claiming that the outage of popular social media platforms was planned because Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wanted to foray into the cryptocurrency business.
By Newsmeter Network Published on 8 Oct 2021 5:30 AM GMT
Hyderabad: Netizens are claiming that the outage of popular social media platforms was planned because Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wanted to foray into the cryptocurrency business.
"WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram are entering the crypto space. To speed up the process of mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and to say sorry for the long downtime, we decided to launch distribution of 15k BTC and 40k ETH (sic)," reads the post which is overlaid with graphics.
A user wrote: "Is it really #socialdown or some kind of test..... For future digital w@rfare.. because... All of a sudden #facebookdown #WhatsApp #instagramdown #serverdown #WhatsAppDown #InternetShutDown #instagramdisabled. How can this is just Co-incident (sic)."
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Fact Check:
The claim is False.
NewsMeter noticed the banner at the podium, where Zuckerberg is seen delivering his speech, read, `Institute of Politics and Public Service'. Taking this as a clue, we ran a keyword search, the fact check team found an academic center of Georgetown University in the US.
The fact-checker searched for Zuckerberg speeches at Georgetown University and came across a YouTube video uploaded by `CNET' on October 18, 2019. The thumbnail of the video reads, "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's entire speech (at Georgetown University)".
Around 29 minutes into the video, we found the part that is going viral.
Later, the team found the same video uploaded on Zuckerberg's Facebook page on October 17, 2019. It has been captioned, "Live from Georgetown Standing For Voice and Free Expression".
In his speech, he highlighted the freedom of expression on social media and the challenges they face to uphold it.
On outage, Facebook and its CEO issued a statement saying it was a faulty configuration change.
Many such claims are doing rounds on social media. NewsMeter has debunked one related to a cyberattack by a 13-year old boy.
Evidently, Facebook has blamed faulty configuration changes for disruption in their services. Therefore the claim that Mark Zuckerberg wanted to foray into the cryptocurrency market is false.
