Debunked: Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg is NOT Giving Away Money to Users

File this one under, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

While perusing through my Facebook News Feed over the past week or so, I've noticed several friends posting the following status (or some variation of it):

When I see statements like this, my B.S. detector instantly goes off for a couple of reasons. 1) Why in the world would Mark Zuckerberg give away billions of dollars to random people? Keep in mind, this is the same guy who may have ripped off the entire concept of Facebook from two other people if the movie, The Social Network, is to be believed. 2) Let's say Zuckerberg did have an epiphany and decide he had all the money he needed and did want to give some away to random people who use the networking site he built his empire upon, don't you think he'd come up with a better way to do it other than simply copying and pasting a vague status update?

At the risk of sounding like I think everyone who shares this status is an idiot, I will give them some benefit of the doubt. They probably know it's a load of horse manure, but figure, what the heck, if it proves to be true then I'll take the money and laugh in the face of every doubter out there. If it is a load of horse manure, then they're out nothing.

What irritates me, is that in this day and age where we can get the answer to almost any question that pops in our head in an instant, people still blindly share this kind of stuff. It took me maybe five minutes to Google, "Mark Zuckerberg Money" to get pages, and pages of stories from reputable sources calling it a hoax.

One of those sites is my go-to for anything I find a bit too good to be true, Snopes.com. According to a post dated December 3rd, this particular hoax began after Zuckerberg announced the birth of his child and his plan for donating "99% of his Facebook shares - currently over $45 billion" during the remainder of he and his wife's lives to foundations, charities, etc. that look to improve the quality of life for human beings around the world.

How this transformed into the Zuckerbergs taking 10-percent of that $45 billion and simply giving it away to random people for no other reason than the fact they followed simple copy and paste instructions is unknown. What is known is they for sure aren't doing it.

Truth be told, you really shouldn't need to research it to know it's garbage. Look at the status update above again. When I look at it, there are a few glaring statements that jump out. The first being "According to Good Morning America". This could easily be "CNN", "the Today Show", "Oprah", or any other popular program. As a matter of fact, a quick search of "Mark Zuckerberg money good morning america" resulted in one post from the show discussing Zuckerberg's initial update announcing the plan to donate the shares.

Honestly though, that whole opening sentence is screwy. "The lucky recipients are...According to Good Morning America...not a hoax!"; That line alone is incorrect on so many levels. It claims to announce the recipients, but never does. It throws a popular news program in there to try and add validity to the story, without actually citing anything from said program, and then tries to get you to buy in by claiming it's not a hoax. But as we all know, if it smells like a duck...

A little further down, it claims that Zuckerberg will announce the winners at "midnight PST", but never specifies a day. Today? Tomorrow? March 23rd, 2019? And why midnight on the west coast? That's 3am on the east coast. If someone were to give away billions of dollars, don't you think they'd make it during a time when most people were awake?

Come on everybody. We're smarter than this. At least I hope.

Remember, if it's too good to be true, more times than not, it is.

Research, people, research. The world will be better place for it.