The Facebook Inc. logo is displayed on an Apple Inc. Macbook Air laptop in an arranged photograph taken in New York, U.S., on Thursday, July 26, 2018. Facebook shares plunged 19 percent Thursday after second-quarter sales and user growth missed Wall Street estimates. Photographer: Johannes Berg/Bloomberg
A month before the 2016 US presidential election, a rumour spread on Facebook. People were sharing a viral gimmick familiar to email spammers: Copy and paste this message to all your friends, or Facebook will share your private information. The hoax took off, particularly in pockets of the US and the Philippines.
Inside Facebook Inc’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters, a small group of staffers watched this rumour gain traction using a special software program they called Stormchaser. The tool was designed to track hoaxes and “memes” – silly, often untrue Internet missives – about Facebook on the social network and other company-owned services including WhatsApp.
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