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Tyler Perry And Oprah Teaming Up For Facebook Giveaway Is A Hoax

Tyler Perry And Oprah Teaming Up For Facebook Giveaway Is A Hoax

Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry teaming up for a big-ticket Facebook giveaway is a hoax. Contrary to the social media scams circulating, Oprah and Perry are not providing away cars, houses, money, or anything else on Facebook. Rather, this is just a hoax taking advantage of the fact that the two have previously been very charitable.

Where did this originate? In December 2016, a number of social media posts appeared claiming that Facebook users who followed instructions to “like” and “share” could win myriad prizes in a purported giveaway sponsored by the two celebrities.

According to Snopes, various versions of this scam very first appeared on Instagram in January 2016. Much like similar hoaxes, a number of crimson flags were evident at very first glance for social media users. Very first off, the pages are not endorsed by any official channel associated with either Oprah or Perry, and the specifics of the “giveaway” switches, as does the bait, which ranges from money to fresh cars.

“The very first clue the giveaways following this format were not on the up-and-up was the pages to which Facebook users were directed, pages that had been created just days before the giveaway posts begin to show up. Not only were the secondary Facebook pages involved always fresh, they were also not linked with car companies or other interests one might imagine could reasonably be expected to suggest up a car in exchange for social media advertising (such as automobile dealerships, insurance companies, or large retailers). Were a legitimate company to engage in such a high-ticket contest giveaway, the incentive would be exposure; however, no corresponding promotional comeback on advertising investment was discernable in these Facebook giveaway claims.

The tactics were similar to latest scams involving Costco, Kroger and Amazon bounty cards, but the six-figure price tag linked to some of the vehicles involved in the Facebook car giveaway posts proved a far more difficult-to-resist enticement for some users, not all of whom questioned whether sharing a page introduced any negative consequence should it later turn out to be a prank, hoax, or other false promise.”

The purpose behind these scams involving people like Oprah and Perry is to rapidly build a large Facebook following in order to sell pages with high “like” counts to third parties. While the hoaxes show up to present little risk to participants, liking and sharing the false information is not entirely safe.

Here are some examples of people discussing the scam on social media.

So y’all still falling for that tyler perry and oprah giveaway 😭🙄

people still falling for that fake Oprah & Tyler Perry giveaway on IG 😒

I am so sick and tired of y’all falling for that Tyler Perry and Oprah giveaway mess 😒

You spotted no one won $5K last time Oprah and Tyler Perry had a giveaway but you gonna repost it anyways

By liking and sharing the scam, you help the scammer’s interests and encourage others to participate in the scheme. Page likes potentially enable user data mining by scammers. The “liked” pages also often switch, leaving names and identities unwittingly endorsing a scam, hate page, or other undesirable activity.

Perry, writer and creator of The Haves and the Have Nots, gave a peek into his creative process. “I found a love of storytelling when I was a kid,” Tyler says. “Because of a lot of the things that I suffered, I developed a very vivid imagination. And no matter what was going on in the house—no matter how much hell was violating loose—I could just go somewhere into my head and be in a much better place.”

What did you think of the scam? Did you see people liking and sharing it on social media? Sound off below in the comments section.

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