William Shatner Wants You To Know He’s Alive After Facebook Death Hoax

Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer March 23, 2018

It’s a tough week for Facebook, which plunged a rather dramatic $37 billion dollars as reports emerged that the firm Cambridge Analytica accessed user data in connection with the Trump campaign. And now, as if that blackening of personal freedoms wasn’t enough, the website is also hosting ads that erroneously claim that “Star Trek” actor William Shatner is dead.

Understandably, William Shatner is not happy about this.

The 87 year-old actor blasted Facebook over an ad by Avocet Retail Sales, which showed a teary-eyed looking Shatner over the words, “Beloved Actor William Shatner Found Dead.”

Image by Twitter Screenshot

“What’s up with allowing this Avocet Retail Sales ad to pass your muster?” Shatner tweeted at Facebook, prompting an apology on Twitter from a Facebook employee, and a promise that the ad had been removed. “Thank you, I’m not planning on dying,” responded Shatner, “so please take down those kinds of ads.”

The bad news: we may have fewer rights under capitalism than we’d previously thought.

The good news: William Shatner is never going to die.

You win some, you lose some.

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

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