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January 9, 2008

French Press Falls For Major Facebook Prank

Ouriel Ohayon

90 comments »

This is probably the biggest hoax in the history of Facebook. It happened in France and is one of the most discussed stories in the French blogosphere right now. It all started a few weeks ago with a simple third-party Facebook application that was aimed at designating, every quarter, a new “Facebook Worldwide president”. A young 28 year-old French man by the name of Arash Derambarsh decided to run for the presidency believing this was a real election (or faking to believe) and started to invite his friends and even created an official program: stimulate tolerance across religions, fight illiteracy, and promote French culture worldwide. Until then, there was nothing really worth talking about.

But here is the crunch: Arash landed at the top of the application and became “president” (for the record, during the first session the application had been installed 140k+ times and the “candidate” received officially 9k+ votes..). He used that information and got some coverage with French media that started to report the news and really believed that a French man had become the new worldwide president of Facebook without even taking the time to validate the facts or understanding what this title implied.

fbpresident.jpg

Then the infernal spiral fired up and very serious TV channels and traditional media covered the story one after the other: TF1, LePoint, L’express, FranceInter, Le Parisien, …They all mentioned the story as if this was real: check it out for yourself. Arash is suddenly becoming a star in France, gets his page in Wikipedia (update: and now a Mahalo entry) and is invited to talk about his presidency and his program for a few days; public opinion is with him. The guy talks well, has some political track record and finally sounds credible.

Of course Facebook has nothing to do with this, but nevertheless in some interviews Arash implies that he has a project with UNESCO and some backup from Facebook; he even declares that he has the power to reach, via a secret Facebook feature, close to a hundred million users, more than the French President himself. No one balks. Everyone buys it although this is really easy to fact check that Facebook does not have close to a hundred million users and even easier to validate the reality of this story with Facebook’s press department. Arash is actually nothing else than the president of FakeBook.

But Facebook users are not fools and a group arises, denouncing the whole thing. ZDnet France spots the hoax, bloggers follow up quickly and the truth comes to light. According to the inquiry made by ArretsurImages many journalists covered the news just because others did and because the “President” looked credible. And then finally a wave of new articles came back to the story explaining this was a fake and that Arash misunderstood the purpose of this election. Of course this is too late and the French press has been fooled all the way.

Many tried to reach Arash for more details and reactions but without success. Did he do this out of pure calculation or was his ego responsible for the whole story? The most important point: A simple user managed to generate the biggest prank in the history of Facebook and the press bought it. Hilarious, ridiculous, but also worrying and sad for the French press (a big chunk of it) whose credibility has been hit hard.

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Comments

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  1. John McCrea

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:14 am

    An excellent example of how the world of media has now been completely turned upside down. What breaks as news in the blogosphere and echoes loudly enough (with or without any fact-checking) becomes the must-cover story for old-school media outlets, like newspapers. Their staffs have been reduced, so fact-checking becomes a luxury no longer affordable.

  2. Henry Michel

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:24 am

    Great story, thanks ! Now the main question is to know if ,after such a prank and the backlash, Arash will earn benefits (fame, buzz) or pay consequences. Time will tell…

  3. Elf

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:26 am

    Its good to see that new media has become a news source for old media. New media has been accused of not being a reliable source. But this example shows reality of old media itself. Anyways also I find much more news on internet then I can ever hope of finding on my TV.

  4. Miel

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:31 am

    Comes to show that ‘real’ journalism is actually the same as copy-pasting a news story without fact-checking. Not all of them, but a lot of journalists have become lazy. The quality of a lot of newspapers is going down pretty fast. You notice that all over the world.

    The gap between traditional and online media is pretty large. So large in fact that it seems like an enormous mountain to climb for a regular journalist to dig deep in the history/truth of an online story.

    I wonder how many journalists will admit that bloggers dug it out and if that would change the perception of citizen journalism. Although it seems possible, the mainstream media will probably remain in its ivory tower and lick their wounds.

  5. Shams

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:35 am

    Funny though, but how it is easy to manipulate things in the internet :-)

  6. Dji - industrialsDirectory.com

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:37 am

    What a sad story for the french press but it clearly shows that FB can play a bigger role in modern communication that one would have expected.

  7. JMS

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:50 am

    There’s a lot of irony here. Anyone notice the rampant grammatical mistakes, making the story almost unreadable? Maybe English isn’t Ouriel’s first language, which is fine (so NOT opening an immigration thing here), but can’t someone else read and edit? It’s a pretty standard practice, especially on a publication with this kind of coverage, to do that. Maintains credibility.

    Like I said…ironic.

  8. User447

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:50 am

    Somebody’s been spending a little too much time on Facebook.

  9. ohnopirates

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    @1 - Isn’t it “Fact Writing” now and not fact checking?

    It’s nice to see that it’s not just over here.

  10. OhBrother

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    This post is packed with spelling and grammar errors making it almost impossible to read. Doesn’t anyone spellcheck this stuff?

  11. Guillaume

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:59 am

    Wow…how can you be so stupid?

    Hey, I just wrote to Le Monde that I am the first French man to win the US primaries…wait to see the cover story tomorrow!!!

  12. SEO TIPS

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:59 am

    This is to funny! I want to become the face book president! I bet that news station feels like a JACKa$$

  13. Greg

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:59 am

    Man, mainstream media sure is reliable. Unlike those jerks on the Internet, you can trust them to vet all their stories and check all their facts.

    This is a hilariously awesome prank, and I can’t believe he got away with it. Not to pick on the French media, because I get the feeling this could happen in a lot of countries, but it’s absolutely pathetic that a ridiculous story like this can gain that much momentun.

  14. Wolke Snow

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:02 am

    > … sad for the French press whose credibility has been hit

    Does Duncan Riley write for them as well?

  15. Gonzague

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:06 am

    The simple fact that he managed to let people believe that he “misunderstood” what the application was, what he could / couldn’t do disgusts me.

    I mean COME ON.. .. It was all part of his very plan !

    (For french readers , I had posted a little something here : http://blog.gonzaguedambricour.....n-janvier/ )

  16. Gonzague

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:06 am

    ouch i made a ton of mistakes … sorry :-s

  17. Your High School English Teacher

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:11 am

    Was this written by a fourth grader?

    The writing level on TechCrunch is abysmal. At least most major media outlets make an attempt to adhere to some sort of writing standard.

  18. Embarrasing

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:19 am

    I don’t recall ever reading an article written by this guy before, but I’ve got to wonder has anyone else at TechCrunch read his writing before allowing him to post.

  19. Damien

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:20 am

    Gonzague is everywhere, the real president is Gonzague Dambricourt :p

  20. A.C.

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:21 am

    Is it the story you were talking about in twitter? ;)

  21. Morgan Warstler

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:36 am

    Up on drudge.

  22. PJ

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:37 am

    The people of Facebook can elect a leader if they want, Facebook has no say in that.

    Maybe people want leadership that transcends national boundaries? I don’t see the problem. You can aspire to be the president of a country or you can gain broader support of people worldwide, bypassing antiquated communications systems, voting mechanisms, prejudices, language barriers, distance, etc.

  23. Greg

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:39 am

    Everyone ragging on the guy’s English, remember that Ouriel is French, and he’s the editor of TechCrunch France, which explains both the grammatical errors and why he was the one to publish this story. A proof-read wouldn’t have been a bad idea, but he’s writing in what I assume is his second language, so I’m willing to cut some slack.

  24. Gabe

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:40 am

    I didn’t know styles of coffee makers could fall victim to pranks…

  25. Bob

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:48 am

    Are you seriously dumb? Of course nobody in France has ever believed of a serious Facebook president! They’re just mentioning the story because FB is one of the biggest thing right now and a French guy got some attention. Yes, the articles are written in a way to give it more credibility but none of them pretends it’s a serious and meaningful title!
    PS: Being French, please forgive me for the mistakes. Ouriel is also French, that may explain his, that doesn’t excuse the lack of spell checking though

  26. Mark Zawacki

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:48 am

    What’s his position on banning Scoble?

  27. Andrew

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:49 am

    poorly written post!

  28. Ouriel Ohayon

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:53 am

    Bob, wake up. i seriously doubt you live in France if you can say that. Just read the papers and watch tv.

  29. Mikey

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:55 am

    Who said the French press had credibility?

  30. Victor

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:56 am

    It’s just an amazing bluff from this guy in the french press! Of course he’s the first to understand the non-sense of his title.
    It shows the credibility of our press…
    A french

  31. Jonathan Dingman

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:57 am

    That’s some serious diggbait man, way to go!

  32. Midnight Skulker

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:57 am

    The need is for journalists to become more literate

  33. Chris

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:58 am

    I would like to congratulate the 2008 president. :)

  34. Marque

    January 9th, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Guess what folks - all news people are this dumb. We make the mistake of thinking they’re smart. Most of them are actor-wannabees who ended up on local tv. We are the one’s who should be fact checking them.

  35. LaDonna

    January 9th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    It is the same French press (Agence France Presse) which published on December 20, 2007 a story on the Secession of the Sioux Tribes from the United States, story which has circulated throughout the world and been reprinted in hundreds of newspapers in several languages: the actual facts were that four individual Indians, with no credentials or authority to represent anyone but themselves called a press conference in Washington D. C, on December 19. A french reporter seeking some kind of hot story mistook them for actual representatives of the Lakota (Sioux) nation, and without checking any facts whatsoever, or the veracity of their ludicrous Press Release, transformed a stunt into an international crisis, and the rumor thus started went around the world like fire for several days. I have personally asked Agence France Presse and Le Monde for a retraction of their false story, but their subsequent silence is deafening.

  36. Michael Caton

    January 9th, 2008 at 10:09 am

    This is more complex than just not fact checking, lots of bloggers don’t do fact checking either but mistakes get lost in the noise. Traditional news organizations rely heavily on wire services to find content they can either repurpose or use as a baseline for their self-generated content. Relying on news services sets a baseline that assumes that the wire service has done the basics of reporting (e.g. fact checking). When that system breaks down, then you will see multiple news outlets make the same mistake over and over again.

    Any news story or blog post that purports to be news (as opposed to opinion/analysis) without second or third-party comment is suspect. Assume the facts are correct or presented as unbiased at your own risk.

  37. Emoney

    January 9th, 2008 at 10:10 am

    Sacre bleu!

  38. Identity Auditing Dept

    January 9th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    That guy looks like Pud (Philip Kaplan from AdBrite, FCompany, etc.).

  39. claymeadow

    January 9th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    msm fact checking issues aside, btw what would be the fact here? anyways, sounds like a neat social app. never been to fb, uses computer to make money then goes home… :-)

  40. llmcclymonds

    January 9th, 2008 at 10:38 am

    “… so fact-checking becomes a luxury no longer affordable.”… You’ve GOTTA be kidding, AND, they can’t “afford” to google?

  41. JMS

    January 9th, 2008 at 10:38 am

    …and all people named “Marque” are narrow-minded schmucks.

  42. JMK

    January 9th, 2008 at 10:44 am

    My gosh, get an editor. This article was nothing short of a butchery of the English language.

  43. Mike

    January 9th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    So sad that even in todays world people still fall for this crap.

    Good lord you have all that referencing power at your disposal and the media still churns out junk

    this is why I don;t buy newspapers

    ——–

    http://www.xenbet.com

  44. Farhan Lalji

    January 9th, 2008 at 11:16 am

    Ouriel to bob: “Just read the papers and watch tv.”

    If that were true, the world would believe that everyone wanted to vote for Barack Obama and he was a shoo-in for President of the US after the Iowa caucus, or that Mike Huckabee was the greatest thing for the Republican party since sliced bread. Or that Sarkozy was an alcoholic… okay maybe you have a point, or maybe papers and television are the beliefs of the media and not really the people. Maybe new media has a better grasp of what people in the country actually believe.

  45. merky

    January 9th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    It’s not just the French press that has this problem…

  46. tracyshaun

    January 9th, 2008 at 11:36 am

    Isn’t this the same thing that happened in Florida in 2000? A fool pulled off the biggest prank in American history by claiming to have won the electorate? Everyone believed him… all the way up to a 4-3 vote in the Supreme Court.

  47. Martin Swarmish

    January 9th, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Umm …. Michael… do you actually edit these posts?
    He suggested that the media should use Wikipedia to do fact checking!

  48. Anna

    January 9th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    that is soooo funny - French are so stupid! At the time the biggest newspaper LeMonde reported about Hatebook.org they reported that the founder is a real man with the name Dr.Evil - they didn’t get the joke that Dr.Evil is just a fake and Hatebook a parody! Ts ts ts

  49. Ozh

    January 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    I’ve read a few French articles and I don’t think any journalist was tricked into something the headline suggests. Yes, they probably dont know FB enough to understand that the so called President only reaches people having installed the application, and not 100% of FB users. They don’t seem to think that the guy has any real power in FB as a company.

    Ouriel, I find it quite stupid from you to post such a fake news that just serves as a lighter for yet another “omg French are so [insert word here]”. Or, are you planning to post something about Americans being obese, next?

    Didn’t know something on TC could surpass Duncan Riley in writing partial and underdocumented items.

  50. Eric

    January 9th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    Great, next they’ll tell us the winner of u4prez.com won’t really be president of the USA.

  51. Ouriel Ohayon

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    > Martin a mere Google search would have lead to the same results….

    > Ozh then read again, i may do typos in english but i DO understand french

  52. Jeremy Chone

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Funny, saw Arash in a relatively known “French daily show” (with Fogiel). They all made fun of him, but they believed him.

    Here is the link:

    http://www.dailymotion.com/rel.....ier_people

  53. Omeca

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Ah. Looks like the surge is going well.

    Good work USA - Good work GWB

  54. Marek

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    Hey, if the guy got voted for prez he is the prez! This doesnt prove anything else except that people really need to get a life. How was this a hoax? Did the falsify votes? That happens a lot also in RL presidential elections. I quess this rather implies the nature of “virtual”, which by definition means fake and nonexistent. My point: This guy is just as much Facebook “president” as other users are “citizens”. Take of your pink tech glasses for a second, it’s just a corporate social networking site. It is not going to revolutionize aything. It is not the first and it will not be the last.

  55. jackmayhofferr

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    just shows you how dumb the media is. Howard Stern’s legion of crank callers proves in daily

  56. Gilles Klein

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    It quite easy to get in touch with the fake French “Facebook president”, just need to phone him as I have done it. I have been doing a long story about this on onlie journalism’website ArretSurImages.net, it has been quoted today by the french daily newspaper Liberation.

    It started few month ago, more easily than ever, as the young student was already in the media during past years for political issues, on one side. On the other side my French fellows journalists are under influence as Facebook was the Back to school 2007’s buzz.

  57. Ouriel Ohayon

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    Yes Gilles your excellent article is mentionned above

  58. Jack McGavern

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

    One more raison to haet the French. Liek anyone needed one.

  59. Tom O'Leary

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    Re: OhBrother

    “This post is packed with spelling and grammar errors making it almost impossible to read. Doesn’t anyone spellcheck this stuff?”

    Do you mean grammatical errors? Perhaps they should proof the comments as well ; )

    Re: Embarrasing [sic]

    “…but I’ve got to wonder has…”

    Ditto.

    Here’s some free advice. Don’t throw stones unless your house is made of bricks.

  60. JeffC

    January 9th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

    French Press:

    1) best way to a great cup of coffee
    2) best way to a great piece of balogney

  61. Ed

    January 9th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    I agree with #18 and 19. The post is awful. I thought this article was hard to follow until I read the following:

    “But Facebook users are not fools and a group arises, denouncing the whole thing. ZDnet France spots the hoax, bloggers follow up quickly and the truth comes to light.”

    I stopped reading the article after I read that piece. I will stop reading TechCrunch if this continues. Come on Arrington! I’ve never complained about the writing here, but this is horrible.

  62. Ouriel Ohayon

    January 9th, 2008 at 2:05 pm

    Come on give me a break or i’ll give you a lesson of French

  63. maya

    January 9th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    his name is catchy… “arash derambarsh”… i like to say it again and again. french presidents have cool names. even “sarkozy”… its a cool name to say.

  64. Andrew Baron

    January 9th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    Hey Gilles, I can see you now peering over your glasses - the accent comes through in your writing as well as in speech ;)

    So now that we have a President, what do we want?

    I’d like for the advertisers to start paying sales tax so we can get some new playing fields.

  65. Mark

    January 9th, 2008 at 6:35 pm

    This, in my opinion, got really out of hand. Facebook has politely requested that we remove all references to Facebook within our app and take down FacebookPresident.com.

    We also have to do some more maintenance on the app because users are now using bots to create fake facebook accounts and spam for votes.

    Our company ClutterMe Inc. is the creator of ClutterMe.com. We’re a two person start-up and we make Facebook applications in addition to maintaining ClutterMe.com.

    For more information on us, please visit, http://blog.clutterme.com.

  66. Will

    January 9th, 2008 at 7:59 pm

    Ahhh the media always jumping the gun w/o researching any of the facts… good times…

  67. Tim

    January 9th, 2008 at 8:58 pm

    Frogs, crazy.

  68. Harshal Vaidya

    January 9th, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    European media is a joke anyway. I lived in London for a year and used to read tabloids regularly. Mainstream newspapers try to separate themselves from the tabloids by engaging into huge fights consuming articles over articles in the papers. I’d never trust EU media. Especially French and British.

  69. Paul

    January 10th, 2008 at 1:45 am

    This is proof that the old dinosaur media is really crumbling. You telling me that not one journalist couldn’t checked it out themselves before committing to a story?

    Whether this guy was a poor misguided fool or just doing the whole thing for a publicity stunt is neither here nor there, this is indicative of just how sh!t the main stream media is nowadays.

    Comment from Harshal Vaidya, I couldn’t agree more. English newspapers are a joke and I don’t trust ANYTHING anymore without getting at least three to five differing reports now.

    Overall though, f*ck FaceBook. I hate it.

  70. kwyxz

    January 10th, 2008 at 2:56 am

    As a french Facebook user, I will totally backup Ouriel here. What he describes is completely true. The french press really BOUGHT it. Stop talking about “french bashing” here, Ouriel IS french.

    So yeah, here’s the thing. The french press talks about something it doesn’t understand or know a clue about, gets pranked by a fraud who is nothing but a smart-pimped attention whore, and now it has lost credib… wait, did the french press still have credibility ? It is just yet another proof that our so-called “journalists” are nothing but followers, speaking of something only because everyone is speaking about it and carefully letting slip real news into oblivion.

    Investigating ? Bah. Leave it to “Le Canard Enchainé”.

    No wonder why fewer and fewer people trust the media everyday in France.

  71. Saeid Azish

    January 10th, 2008 at 4:48 am

    Oh, that’s because he’s a smart Iranian.

  72. Sebastian

    January 10th, 2008 at 6:23 am

    @Harshal Vaidya: Are you serious? As opposed to media from what? US? India? China? Where?

  73. buz

    January 10th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    maybe the french media were simply hoping and desparately looking for their next great hope……look at sarkozy’s antics, you think only the french journalists get duped?!?!?!?!!!!!!!

  74. Xenophon

    January 10th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhlERjW0bhw

  75. Charles Nouÿrit

    January 23rd, 2008 at 6:48 am

    Ouriel,

    The group on Facebook have been closed by them and my account disabled for that…

    Here’s Facebook email:

    “Hello,

    The group “Pour la destitution immédiate de M. Arash Derambarsh” has been removed because it violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, groups that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down groups that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled.

    If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page at http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=34.

    The Facebook Team”

    And this one before:

    “Hi,

    Your account has been disabled for persistent misuse of the site. Please contact disabled@facebook.com for more information.

    The Facebook Team”

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