{"id":2277,"date":"2025-05-20T06:44:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T06:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsusa33.com\/?p=2277"},"modified":"2025-05-20T06:44:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T06:44:59","slug":"this-approximately-2-year-old-boy-was-found-see-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsusa33.com\/?p=2277","title":{"rendered":"This approximately 2-year-old boy was found… See more"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This approximately 2-year-old boy was found… See more<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posts<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0have falsely claimed that a \u201clittle boy approximately 2 years old\u201d has been found walking at night by a police officer, either in Hereford or 170 miles away in King\u2019s Lynn.<\/p>\n

The post claiming this happened in Hereford was shared in a\u00a0local Facebook group<\/a>\u00a0with more than 25,000 members, along with two photos of a child with bruises and cuts on his face.<\/p>\n

It says: \u201cThis little boy approximately 2 years old was found last night walking behind a home here in #hereford Deputy Tyler Cooper saved him and took him to the Police Station but no one has an idea where he lives, the neighbours don’t know him or how he got there. He says his mom’s name is Ella. Let’s flood our feeds so that this post may reach his family, thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

A\u00a0separate post<\/a>\u00a0claiming the same thing happened in King\u2019s Lynn in Norfolk is almost identical, and includes the same photos.<\/p>\n

Neither post is true. The force responsible for Hereford, West Mercia Police, told Full Fact that there\u2019s no record of an incident matching the description in the post, and that it doesn’t have an officer called \u201cTyler Cooper\u201d. Norfolk Constabulary confirmed to us that it doesn\u2019t have a \u201cdeputy\u201d rank or an officer called \u201cTyler Cooper\u201d.<\/p>\n

These posts appear to be the latest example of hoax posts that we\u2019ve seen falsely raise an alarm for\u00a0missing children and<\/a>\u00a0elderly people<\/a>,\u00a0abandoned infants<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0injured dogs<\/a>\u00a0in Facebook community groups.<\/p>\n

Our\u00a0investigation<\/a>\u00a0into these sorts of hoax posts last year found that they\u2019re often edited later to promote something completely different, such as a property listing or cashback site, with comments frequently disabled to prevent users calling them out publicly. Both of these\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0posts<\/a>\u00a0had their comments section disabled.<\/p>\n

Our guide<\/a>\u00a0offers more tips for how to spot if a Facebook post is a hoax.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve written to Facebook\u2019s parent company Meta expressing concerns about how these hoax posts can flood community groups, and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This approximately 2-year-old boy was found… See more Posts\u00a0on\u00a0Facebook\u00a0have falsely claimed that a \u201clittle boy approximately 2 years old\u201d has been found walking at night by a police officer, either … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThis approximately 2-year-old boy was found... 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