Facebook ‘Fact-Checks’ Copyright Hoax

To all panicked Facebook users who posted about copyright ownership on your timelines Monday: you fell for a hoax. The company issued a “fact-check” notice on the site debunking a rumor that it was changing its copyright laws after a “New Facebook Guidelines” meme went viral. The “Guidelines” post claims Facebook users own copyrights to their photos, videos, messages, and all other content posted to their pages and urges other users to copy and paste it into their timelines. But the message was more or less a privacy scare tactic. The “laws” it outlined were moot, as Facebook pointed out in its “fact-check,” since anyone who uses Facebook “owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms.”