A Fake Facebook Ad Killed Off William Shatner. Captain Kirk Was Not Happy.
“Star Trek” legend William Shatner set his phasers on Facebook after a sponsored ad circulating on the social media platform’s Messenger service falsely claimed he had died.
A Twitter user alerted Shatner to the premature news of his death on Wednesday afternoon, the day before the actor turned 87. Shatner responded by asking Facebook to investigate.
Hey @facebook isn’t this your messenger app? What’s up with you allowing this Acocet Retail Sales ad to pass your muster? Thought you were doing something about this? https://t.co/1fFriJ8PRu
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) March 21, 2018
“What’s up with you allowing this Acocet Retail Sales ad to pass your muster?” Shatner asked. “Thought you were doing something about this?”
The fake ad came at a tricky time for Facebook, which is currently catching heat over a huge data breach ― for which CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally apologized on Wednesday.
Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, responded to Shatner more than two hours later to reveal that the offending ad and page had been “removed” from the social media platform.
Hi, I'm from Facebook. Thanks for letting us know about this. We have removed this ad and Page from Facebook
— Rob Leathern 🛠 (@robleathern) March 21, 2018
Shatner thanked Leathern for the prompt action and added what appeared to be a semi-serious request.
Thank you. I’m not planning on dying so please continue to block those kinds of ads. https://t.co/9f3k3uN5z4
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) March 21, 2018
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
