On Jan. 7, 2025, Meta, the social media company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced it was ending its fact-checking program by switching to a system like X's Community Notes.
In the wake of the announcement, posts appeared on Facebook claiming that while at Harvard University, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the program that would eventually become Facebook from a classmate, Chris Hughes. According to the posts, Hughes went missing not long after and has not been heard from since. Snopes readers wrote in to ask whether the claim was true.
(Facebook Page No Astronauts Allowed)
The claim is false. To start, Hughes did not go missing in 2003 — he was a part of Facebook until 2007, when he left to work for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, according to Forbes and Vox. He sold most of his stake in the social media giant by 2012 and has since said he believes Facebook should be broken up.
Additionally, there was no public evidence to support the claim that Zuckerberg stole Facebook from Hughes. In 2008, Zuckerberg did settle a lawsuit with three other Harvard students, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, who claimed Zuckerberg stole the idea and code for Facebook from them, but Hughes was not a party in that lawsuit.
The fact that the claim featured some elements of truth — Hughes did play a crucial role in the early days of Facebook and Zuckerberg was accused of stealing the idea for Facebook by other Harvard students — mixed with incorrect information may have led to people believing it was true.
However, the post concluded with what might be taken as a tongue-in-cheek note that it was intended to be satire: "The story was hushed up until today, when Facebook decided to no longer fact-check posts for accuracy."