Spain’s Largest Wind Up On ” Dia de Los Inocentes” Fools Millions As It Claimed The Former US President Obama Was Moving To Spain

Yesterday in Spain it was ” Dia de Los Inocentes” which is the Spanish version of April fools day.

A social media group on facebook took full advantage of the day when the group known as ” We love Albir” posted that the former US President and his wife Michel had purchased a Villa in the region and were moving to Spain.

The above posting went into description about the so called planned Villa purchase in Spain and the planned move.

The ” wind up” soon went viral as hundreds of people residing in Spain were fooled by the joke and shared the post with others which eventually led to it arriving on Twitter which then led to the joke going viral across the United States and beyond.

Whilst it was hilarious and Spanish people knew it was a joke on the traditional joke day in Spain, many didn’t and were completely fooled, even expats in Spain who didn’t know about the famous joke day “Dia de Los Inocentes”

This morning though it looks like the joke may have backfired on the social media group as they seemed to back track a little in a posting this morning saying:

“Are you easily fooled by social media?

 
Yesterday we ran a totally spoof story about President Obama buying a villa in Albir, as part of a “Dia de los inocentes” joke (it was April fools day in Spain).
 
Without realising, it was also a social experiment, about the way that people accept everything that they read on social media. Within a few minutes, the truth broke out, but that didnt stop many of you from continuing to comment and share, as if it were true.
 
In fact, 90 per cent of the sharing was done after it could reasonably have been expected to know that it was fake, and we calculate that within six hours, our fake story had reached some 50,000 of your friends and contacts. The fake news story soon went viral.
 
OK, so it was a joke and many of you may have enjoyed playing along with us. But it also made us think that we should be much more careful about what we choose to believe and to share with our friends.
 
How can we protect ourselves against being taken in by untrue stories? Well firstly, develop a critical mindset, considering rationally and coldly, whether it could be true.
 
Check the source, to see if they have previously been reliable and see if it is also being reported on mainstream media. Examine the facts given, to see whether evidence backs up the story, and look for fake images, photos that have been tampered with. Asking yourself, does it sound right might be a good starting point.
 
We hope that you werent embarrassed by being outed as an “inocente” and took it in the good humour it was intended. But be always on the lookout for other fake stories.”
 
It seems whilst the joke made millions laugh out loud, some may have been offended hence the released statement to the people responsible for the joke never realised how far it would spread!
 
We thought it was funny at the Euro Weekly News and must admit it fooled two of our reporters at first, but of course we checked out the facts as a responsible newspaper for the Spanish community.

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