A man named John Ederson is looking for his birth parents in Warrington.
There is no evidence this appeal is genuine. The pictures appear to have been taken from elsewhere online, and do not match Mr Ederson’s alleged birth date.
A post on Facebook, shared more than 500 times, falsely claims to be from a man named “John Ederson” from Warrington who is looking for his birth parents.
The post, which was shared to a Warrington “buy and sell” group says: “Hello my name is john Ederson. I was born here in warrington February 24 in 1979 looking for my birth mother or father.
“My father's name is Jonathan M Ederson and my mother's name Gazelle S Ederson she was only 17 at time of my birth. My father used to be a mechanic and my mother used to work at a supermarket. That's all info I have. Please bump this post and help me reunite with my family[sic].”
This is not a real appeal. Besides the fact that the name of the profile that posted the appeal is not “John Ederson”, both pictures in the post appear to have been taken from elsewhere online.
The picture supposedly showing Mr Ederson as a small child is from a Manchester Evening News article published in July 2015, showcasing pictures from the 1970s by an amateur local photographer.
The picture is captioned: “A cute little youngster playing in Cheadle in the 1970s.” The child in the picture is clearly older than Mr Ederson, who was allegedly born in 1979, could have possibly been in the 1970s.
The second picture, which supposedly shows Mr Ederson in the present day, is taken from a Reddit post about beards which was published three years ago.
Full Fact could find no evidence that either of the pictures are of anyone called John Ederson, nor could we find any trace of this appeal in Warrington elsewhere online, such as in the local media.
The comments under the post have been disabled, and Derbyshire Police has previously warned that this can be a clue such a post may be a hoax, as someone genuinely looking for information is very unlikely to turn off comments.
Full Fact has written many times before about hoax posts, such as reports of missing children, abandoned infants or injured dogs. We have also written previously about hoax posts claiming to be people trying to track down their parents.
Hoaxes pose a risk to user engagement with local community news because groups can become overwhelmed with false information. As a result, people genuinely trying to trace relatives or look for missing people could get ignored or—perhaps worse for those desperately searching for loved ones—dismissed as false.
We have written to Meta expressing these concerns and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem.
It’s always worth checking whether content is real before you share it. We have written a guide on how to verify viral images which you can read here.
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Image courtesy of Joshua Hoehne |
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the pictures appear to have been taken from elsewhere online and there is no evidence this is a genuine appeal.
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