A Whole Bunch of Fashion Insiders Got Got by That Instagram Hoax

For all those brave celebrities and fashion insiders out there posting to protect society from the ills of Instagram earlier this week, maybe check your source. As reported by WWD, a widely-shared post warning users that Instagram could start Doing Things™ with their content turned out to be a hoax.

If anyone missed it, the bizarrely written screenshot read, in part, “Don’t forget tomorrow starts the new Instagram rule where they can use your photos. Don’t forget Deadline today!!! It can be used in court cases in litigation against you. Everything you’ve ever posted becomes public from today Even messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed.” It then implored users to “repost the image in order to prevent Instagram from enacting the rule on their account,” WWD summarized.

The message goes on to say — for no discernible reason and with no context — that “Channel 13 News talked about the change in Instagram’s privacy policy,” before launching into quasi-legalese with words that sometimes make sense.

“There’s no truth to this post,” an Instagram brand communications manager told WWD, despite the use of Lawyer Words like “entities” and “disclose” in the copy.

It’s a grammatical trash-fire top-to-bottom, and it also looks like it emerged from the bowels of Baby Boomer Facebook, making the sheer virality that much more mystifying, but here we are — in a world where this was earnestly shared on social media by Adriana Lima, James Kaliardos, Pati Dubroff, Wendy Goodman, Niall Horan, Tom Holland and Samantha McMillen, among others. What a time.

You can read more about it at WWD.

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