Top social media hoaxes include celebrity death hoaxes like one about Morgan Freeman that generated 1 million likes on Facebook despite being false. Another common hoax is posting doctored images, like one combining a photo of a storm with the Statue of Liberty to falsely claim it was from Hurricane Sandy. A hoax also spread about Justin Bieber having cancer to promote the #BaldforBieber hashtag on Twitter.

1. Top social media hoaxes
As PT Barnum said, there’s a sucker born
every minute. Except he didn’t actually say
that; a rival circus promoter named Dan
Hannum did. Or maybe he didn’t; the
historical record is unclear.
It is, though, an early example of a hoax,
and a fitting quote to kick off our look at
the top social media hoaxes.
These hoaxes seem to spread like wildfire
in the social media age. Did you fall for
them?
By Jeff Jedras

2. Celebrity deaths
You’re not a somebody until you’ve
been “killed” on social media. A
Morgan Freeman fake tribute page
on Facebook generated one million
“likes” last summer – we’re sure the
Shawshank Redemption star
appreciates the love.
And in Canada in 2010, an erroneous
wire bulletin on the death of singer
Gordon Lightfoot, posted to Twitter
by then CanWest reporter David
Akin, quickly went viral. Turns out
the report was false, with the
singer’s manager confirming he’s still
alive and well.

3. Hurricane Sandy pictures
When Hurricane Sandy raced its way up
one of the most populous regions of the
world, it brought a trail of destruction.
And a few social media hoaxes. One that
quickly went viral was a Photoshopped
image of a doomsday-looking storm
bearing down on the Statue of Liberty. It
was actually a composite of a photo of
another storm and the New York harbour.
The Sandy fakes quickly became more
obvious, from the sharks on Staten Island
streets to the Ghostbusters marshmallow
monster terrorizing New Yorkers.

4. Justin Bieber’s cancer scare
Would you go bald for Bieber? The
person behind this hoax may have
been hoping thousands of
Bieliebers would. And some did.
Canadian singer Justin Bieber has a
massive social media following,
and, after false reports that he had
cancer, the #BaldforBieber hash tag
on Twitter quickly went viral.
To the relief of thousands of
teenaged girls, the singer – and his
famous hair – is just fine.

5. The Back to the Future hoax
This one has actually popped up a
few times.
In 1985’s Back to the Future, scientist
Doc Brown programs his Delorean
time machine to a random future
date. A Photoshopped image,
changing the “future” date to today,
quickly went viral in June of 2012.
Except that wasn’t the actual random
future date, which is October 21,
2015.
Hopefully, by that time, people will
still get the reference.

6. The BlackBerry roadmap
It was a poorly executed April Fool’s
prank, but one that spread like wildfire
and suckered in many media and blogs.
Two days before April 1st, an obscure
Twitter account, @BB10Leaks, posted
images of a supposed BlackBerry
roadmap. The tweets are found by a tech
blog, and quickly spread from there to
the world’s technology media.
When traced back to the Twitter, though,
it’s quickly exposed as a hoax, as a
subsequent Tweet showed. Some of the
reports still remain online.