Claim: Facebook (or FarmVille) soon plans to charge monthly subscription fees to users.
Examples:
[Collected via e-mail, December 2009]
There is a website that has over 83,000 members of people protesting the following...
WE'RE AGAINST THE 4.99 A MONTH CHARGE FOR FACEBOOK FROM JUNE 30TH 2010
See website here...
[URL removed]
[Collected via e-mail, February 2010]
NO! I WILL NOT PAY $3.99/MONTH TO USE FACEBOOKK STARTING JULY 9, 2010! JOIN.
[URL removed]
[Collected via e-mail, March 2010]
I'm Quitting Facebook Once We have to Pay $14.99/month on July 9, 2010
[Collected via e-mail, April 2010]
I'm quitting facebook when the start charging $50/per month on July 8, 2010
[Collected via e-mail, May 2010]
NO, I WILL NOT PAY $ 10 A MONTH TO USE FACEBOOK FROM SEPTEMBER 9TH 2010
facebook have confirmed that if they get get over 2,000,000 people against the idea to charge $ 10 a month they will reconsider.
Origins: In late December 2009, Facebook users were hit with yet another hoax when messages began circulating advising them that on 30 June 2010 the popular social networking site would be instituting a monthly charge of $4.99 and entreating them to visit a particular Facebook group supposedly set up to protest the impending charge.
The protest page was a trap for the unwary; clicking on certain elements of it initiated a script that hijacked users' computers. Some of those who did venture a click had their computers taken over by a series of highly objectionable images while malware simultaneously attempted to install itself onto their computers.
Within days, a counter message was circulating by e-mail and among Facebook users:
WARNING: DO NOT JOIN the group We are against paying $4.99 for Facebook - IT's A VIRUS AND HACKER! There are extremely graphic images at the website they suggest you visit. FACEBOOK has no plans on charging us. ELIMINATE THIS GROUP from your groups & run your spyware ASAP. REPOST THIS AS YOUR STATUS on your Profile. Thanks
In February 2010, another Facebook hoax page was created to protest the purported impending monthly charge, that time said to be a monthly $3.99 fee that would begin on 9 July 2010.
The claim that Facebook would be initiating user charges was but the bait to lure people to the protest page and its hidden malicious payload — as far as we can ascertain, there are no plans afoot to require payment from those who use the site. Regarding the issue of whether Facebook would ever charge users for its social networking services, that company's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said in an April 2009 Business Week interview that: "The answer is no, we are not planning on charging a basic fee for our basic services. Once again, that question stems from people thinking we're growing so quickly, we're running out of money. We're growing really quickly, but we can finance that growth. We're not going to charge for our basic services."
A similar rumor from February 2010 claimed that the popular Facebook-based FarmVille game would no longer be available for free after the end of March 2010 but would instead be switching to a $5.99 per month subscription model:
ATTENTION: Zynga has announced that as of March 31, 2010 FarmVille will no longer be available in it's Beta version. The game will be available for a subscription FEE of $5.99 per month and will include additional levels above 70. If you care about FV, please put this as your status in protest.
According to a Zynga representative, that rumor is also false.
Barbara "FB eye" Mikkelson
Last updated: 30 May 2010
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/fbcharge.asp
