hoax

From the Facebook Newsroom:

To reduce the number of these types of posts, News Feed will take into account when many people flag a post as false. News Feed will also take into account when many people choose to delete posts. This means a post with a link to an article that many people have reported as a hoax or chosen to delete will get reduced distribution in News Feed. This update will apply to posts including links, photos, videos and status updates.

Posts that receive lots of reports will be annotated with a message warning people that many others on Facebook have reported it.

And here we thought those were two television shows that had lost all cultural relevance by 2002.

Actor Stephen Collins, recently accused sex predator, lives in the same neighborhood as Donna D'Errico, a former Baywatch star. When she heard gunshots and saw police activity, she rushed to tweet about word from a neighbor that Stephen Collins had shot himself. As it turns out, no such thing happened, but not before the celebrity blogosphere went nuts for a few hours.

Remember that time Brian Williams was shot down in a helicopter in Iraq?

Well now neither does Williams, and he is apologizing publicly for the erroneous story which he has been telling for years after being called out by some of the troops who actually were in the attack.

Sorry dude, I don't remember you being on my aircraft, said Lance Reynolds on Facebook. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.

He brought up the story in a news segment Friday about a tribute to a retired soldier at a New York Rangers game.

But crew members told the military news site Stars & Stripes that this never happened, and Williams issued a retraction.

I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago, Williams said on NBC Nightly News Wednesday. I want to apologize.

The soldiers of the 159th Aviation Regiments Chinook which was actually shot down claim Williams was in a helicopter that arrived an hour later.

I don't know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another. Williams said.

He later elaborated and apologized further in a Facebook comment:

You are absolutely right and I was wrong. In fact, I spent much of the weekend thinking I'd gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in '08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp.

Now people on Twitter have started a hashtag to shame him called #BrianWilliamsMisremembers, in which he claims he was part of some other major historical events.

For the record, here's the Snopes article debunking this.