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 [email protected] 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.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO