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| - Fact Check: Conspiracy theory claims Facebook outage was linked to Zuckerberg's crypto ambitions
It has been claimed on social media that the six-hour Facebook outage on October 4 was planned because Mark Zuckerberg wants to enter the cryptocurrency business. India Today has found this claim to be misleading.
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India Today Fact Check
This is part of Zuckerberg’s speech at Georgetown University, United States, in October 2019. He was speaking about freedom of expression on social media. Facebook has blamed faulty configuration behind the recent outage. The viral clip is edited and a graphics on cryptocurrency overlaid on it.
The longest ever outage of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on October 4 led to rumour mills churning out various conspiracy theories over the incident.
The latest on social media is a claim that the outage was planned because Mark Zuckerberg wants to enter the cryptocurrency business. The claim is circulating with a speech of the Facebook co-founder, where he’s seen advocating for freedom of expression on social media and why they are not yet operating in China.
The three-minute video is overlaid with graphics that says, “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 a distribution of 15k BTC and 40k ETH”.
AFWA probe
In the viral clip, we can see “Institute of Politics and Public Service” written behind the podium from where Zuckerberg is delivering his speech. With the help of keyword search, we found it is an academic centre of Georgetown University in the US.
Taking this as a clue, we searched for Zuckerberg’s speeches at Georgetown University and found a YouTube video uploaded by American media outlet CNET on October 18, 2019. The title of the video reads, “Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s entire speech (at Georgetown University)”.
Some 29 minutes into the speech, we found the part that is going viral.
We found the same speech on Zuckerberg’s Facebook page, posted on October 17, 2019, with the caption, “Live from Georgetown Standing For Voice and Free Expression”.
In the speech, Zuckerberg spoke at length about freedom of expression on social media and challenges they face in upholding the same. Since the October 4 outage, he’d only issued statements on his Facebook page and was yet to publish a video statement till the filing of this article.
Even though several conspiracy theories like cyber attacks are doing the rounds on social media, Facebook has blamed “faulty configuration change” as the main reason behind the six-hour outage.
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