Britney and the Queen face death hoaxes in last week of 2016

ByCraig Haley

2016 earned itself as a somewhat bad year in the world of celebrities, with a rash of high profile deaths occurring as the year came to an end.

So it was perhaps no surprise that Internet pranksters were going to try and have a “little fun” towards the end of the year, and two high profile celebrities seemed to have been killed off by the Internet as a result.

First up, Britney Spears. The popular pop singer may be a little disappointed with Sony Music, because it was their Twitter account getting hacked that resulted in this celebrity death hoax going viral.

The Twitter account belonging to Sony, that boasts over 600,000 followers, erroneously tweeted about her death on Boxing Day in a badly worded RIP message below.

The tweets were later deleted, but not before being retweeted thousands of times across Twitter.

Even Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II isn’t immune to such hoaxes. Only a number of days later, Internet hoaxers took advantage of her lack of public appearances (reportedly down to a cold) and created a fake Twitter account designed to appear like the BBC News Twitter account.


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Using that account, they tweeted “BREAKING: Buckingham Palace announces the death of Queen Elizabeth II at the age of 90. Circumstances are unknown. More to follow.”

Despite the Twitter account being fake and not having anywhere near the number of followers you’d expect the real BBC Twitter account to have, it still managed to fool thousands.

2016 was not only a bad year for real celebrity losses, it was popular with fake ones too. Remember, just because you see it online, it doesn’t mean it’s true. Remember to wait for confirmation before sharing yourself, or risk being left with egg on your face!

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