Facebook officials did the right thing and removed one of the pages published on the popular social media platform, which was spewing out fake brain cancer news about Star Trek’s own William Shatner. The iconic actor uploaded a post to his official Facebook page yesterday (Thursday, April 2) denouncing the Beanstalk Group for posting erroneous stories about him.
The Beanstalk Group posted a number of fake news stories, complete with AI-generated images of Shatner, which claimed the Star Trek actor was battling brain cancer. Shatner categorically denied the false claims, and he even posted a current photo of himself (below) to further denounce the Facebook page’s irresponsible reporting.
The now defunct Beanstalk Group Facebook page even included fake quotes supposedly spoken by Shatner about his failing health. Before the social media platform did the right thing and deleted the page, I went through the posts about our beloved captain of the USS Enterprise. One faux piece of news even had a “quote” from their AI Shatner saying the following:
“This is harder than anything I’ve faced, but I’m not broken. I know the people I’ve shared the road with will carry this journey forward together. I may not be on stage with them right now, but I’ll be listening, believing, and supporting every step of the way. I believe in this music with have.”
In my opinion, whoever wrote this fake quote should enroll in beginner’s composition and learn a little something about grammar — to say nothing of studying the ethics of true journalism. I'm one of those who still values accurate reporting in a day and age where this sort of libelous content keeps popping up.
As such, I’m glad that Facebook finally took the Beanstalk Group’s page down. This is definitely a victory of Shatner and true journalism. Share your thoughts and comments with us on the matter via the Redshirts Always Die Facebook and X pages.
Live long and prosper, Trekkies!