Facebook Hoax 2013: Philippines First Recorded Snowfall

Personal Experiences

I saw this from my Facebook News Feed.

snow-pinas-3-hours

<Image capture from my facebook.com news feeds>

It was shared by some FB friends of mine. Wow! “Philippines’ First Recorded Snowfall“, and some my friends are asking if this is true. So out of curiosity I did some basic checking: OK Video is on YouTube, let’s see the text description from YouTube:

A bizarre highly unusual phenomenon shocked the southern Philippine residents as of this 8:00 am (UTC+08:00) there were confirmed reports that a 3 straight hours of heavy snowfall was reported to certain areas in the Southern region.

Wow 3 hours of heavy snowfall in the Philippines and yet Menard did not know anything about it (Menard FTW, he hid inside a cave somewhere along Ortigas avenue all-day again!!!)

And then I watched the video and with a replay I know it was TOO HOAX(ie) TO BE TRUE. Why? Read on..

OK some disclaimer first: I am not a video expert or a weather expert. I’m a normal IT-dude who is exposed to malware, social engineering and social media (read more about what I do full time here). So I will try to approach this Philippines First Recorded Snowfall issue from my areas of expertise and I will  try to make some sense out of it.

My observations:

  • Too many missing elements to be real news/newsworthy event. No exact location (Southern Philippines/Southern region only?) Is the news outfit reporting that lazy enough (or incompetent enough)  not to give the exact location? C’mon name the Province and City or Town, so that we can verify its authenticity.
  • Is news agency reporting legit? RB News and their logo, sorry haven’t heard of them :p
  • Exaggerated? Or is Media (Conventional and Social ones) in the Philippines that slow? 3 straight hours of heavy snowfall? 3 hours??? Social media (twitter, FB) isn’t that slow to pick up Bizarre events like this and I believe that the rivals biggie News/Media outlets (GMA,ABS-CBN,TV5,Inquirer,Rappler,etc) will catch the story and will make a big fuzz of it in all media.
  • Vague Details. Too many vague details in the video reporting
  • CC and Copyright Infringement. YouTube video text description got some copyright infringement warning then mixed it up with Creative-commons. Hehehe nice combo!

I originally tried to ignore this Facebook Hoax and  tried to get some sleep but seeing another barrage of Philippines First Recorded Snowfall: Is this true? via my FB timeline and 1 friend of a friend commenting that “this may be Malware, blah blah blah”

snow-pinas-panalo-comment

Screencap of my Friend’s Facebook Timeline showing her friend’s “may be malware” comment

I just smirked and said to myself: maybe I missed that malware from my breakfast menu (Thanks Ian for letting me use the screencap).

Given my observations above, I am giving a wild-guess that the people or group behind this video just wants to make it viral. Why? I’ve heard that viral videos in YouTube are good source of moolah, cash, kaching-kaching so #alamna. Wild guess lang naman ok?

Sorry I am still _NOT_ buying it. I will _NOT_ embed the video here at menardconnect.com. My reason: by embedding or re-posting the video I might just contribute to making it viral.

So this Philippines’ First Recorded Snowfall => Too Good to be True =>  HOAX for me OK 🙂

My advice to my FB Friends and readers: Do Not Share/ Do NOT Repost That Philippines’ First Recorded Snowfall video in FB. Let’s help remove some of the clutter in Facebook!!!

If you haven’t seen the video and want to contribute to make it “viral” you can cut and paste the link below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJxmqIyQ2MQ

(FYI: my 1st viewing showed 200K+ views, now it got some 300K+ views already before posting this article)

Please feel free to repost/share this blog post/article to your timeline to help on the awareness campaign.

If you like this Snow in the Philippines hoax post, kindly view my other Facebook Hoax 2013 posts.

 

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