The news that's been circulating is fake

Sep 22, 2014 13:13 GMT  ·  By

There’s been an article making the rounds on the Internet, claiming that Facebook will be charging users starting November 1. This is, of course, a complete hoax, just like many were before it.

The report claims that Facebook will start charging $2.99 (€2.33) per month for each user starting November 1, 2014, which is a measure taken in an effort to fight against the growing costs the company is facing.

Of course, this couldn’t be farther from the truth and the claim is simply untrue. Facebook has not announced any such plans to start charging users a monthly fee for access to the regular site that has some 1.3 billion monthly users.

The issue seems to stem from the story coming from National Report, a website that regularly provides satirical fake news that people are having trouble telling apart from actual news. This isn’t the first time a similar report has circulated, but it has not been true on either occasion.

“At a press conference this morning, Facebook rolled out their 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,” reads the fake news report.

News vs. satire

While National Report sees itself as a satirical site, many are skeptical about this mainly because there are so many fake news that are making their way out of the site and that are believed to be true. The fact that the site displays their news in a manner similar to that of other news sites makes things that much more difficult to tell apart.

Readers also have a fault for actually believing this information before checking twice to see if it comes from a satirical source.

Either way, Facebook is and always will be free, which is something that’s “stamped” on the home page. This alone should alleviate the fears people have that Facebook will start charging them anytime soon.

Furthermore, the last thing Facebook needs is money from its users. Not only would this push away a huge chunk of its users base, but it’s also unnecessary. In the second quarter of 2014, Facebook reported $2.91 billion in review and a net income of $791 million. That’s more than enough to keep the company going.

Users quickly started complaining about the new measure Facebook wants to implement without running the news through Google or any other search engine, which would have exposed the hoax.