Wikipedia 'kills' Conor McGregor: Death hoax goes viral
During the first week of August 22, social media users shared screenshots that seemed to indicate Conor McGregor had died.
The images showed a brief entry on the Irishman's Wikipedia page, as it appears on Google's search engine, which alleged he passed away on August 3, 2022.
Fans took to Twitter to express their confusion on the matter. When users searched for 'Conor McGregor death' on the search engine, the date listed above was given as a result.
The incident was the result of a hoax that went viral after the information appeared on Wikipedia.
A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation explained what happened in a conversation with Snopes.
"It looks like the Spanish Wikipedia article about Conor McGregor was vandalized yesterday to include a date of death and has since been resolved," they said.
"Given the way Knowledge Graph results pull from Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, this can (in rare instances) result in some vandalism being cached in search results, sometimes even after it's already been addressed on Wikipedia.
"It appears that the issue has also been addressed in search results."
If there were any doubts over the false rumours, McGregor ended them by posting on his social media accounts later that day.
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