A blog, InfograpiX, published an article and even shared it on Facebook claiming that China gave up the Scarborough Shoal.
The comments section was a mix of reactions from Facebook users.
Some people expressed their gratefulness and relief over the news.
But the first ones were quick to correct the post, saying that it was a hoax.
A Facebook user even pointed out the fact that one obvious sign that it’s a hoax is its wrong spelling of the word “finally.”
Another raised the issue that China recently warned illegal fishers to stay away from Scarborough Shoal or face jail time. This is true. But a UP professor said that if they do imprison fishermen, they will make an even worse violation of international laws.
Someone also said that this is just a ‘copy paste’ article of an old story.
We investigated by copying some of the parts of the Infograpix article and pasting them onto the Google search box.
We clicked on the first website in the search engine results and found that this is indeed the original article, which was first published by CNBC on July 12, 2016, while the Infograpix article was only posted on August 2016 (look at the URL). They are totally the same, from the first sentence to the last one, except for the misleading Infograpix title.
Infograpix published this article to Facebook in an effort to mislead people. Good thing some people were quick to point out that this article is a hoax, but what’s alarming is that the post has been shared more than 4,000 times over. If you look through their blogs, they seem to publish posts that aim to shock, such as their article on Senator de Lima resigning, which we’ve busted before and PLDT acquiring Telstra for $1 billion, another hoax. So beware of Infograpix and the articles they post and share if you want to avoid misinformation.
Sources: (interaksyon.com, cnbc.com)
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