Several posts circulating on Facebook (FB) are instructing netizens to check the security of their accounts by typing the word “gratula” as a comment. If the word becomes red, an account is supposedly “safe,” but if it remains black, it is hackable and in need of a change in password. Another version alleges that a black “gratula” means the account is logged in on another device somewhere.
This is not true.
The word’s color change does not determine the security of an FB account. It is due to an FB feature called Text Delight, which changes the color of certain words and phrases and provides animation like a flying star, a flower bouquet, or confetti. Most of these selected words and phrases are common greetings and remarks.
“Gratula,” for example, is the Hungarian word for “congratulations.”
The same false advisory has circulated in other countries like France, Nigeria, South Africa and Malaysia much earlier. It has been fact checked by media organizations 20 minutes in 2018 in 2018, Africa Check in 2019 in 2019, and Agence France-Presse last July 28 last July 28.
Filipino netizens, however, only started posting and sharing Filipino versions of the claim last July 29. The posts, according to CrowdTangle, experienced peaks in interactions on FB on July 31, as well as in Aug. 3, 6, and 8 or shortly after newly-appointed Armed Forces of the Philippines chief Lt. Gen. Gilbert Gapay expressed his desire to include provisions “regulating social media” in the implementing rules and regulations of the controversial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020. His remarks apparently made netizens more conscious of digital security, but in the wrong way.
Text Delight was the subject of a 2017 article published on Medium which attempted to list all of the keywords that may activate color changes and animations through the FB feature rolled out that year. The list included “gratula” and translations of “congratulations” in many other languages.
Some Filipino words and phrases—such as “masaya (fun/happy),” “kaya mo ito (you can do this),” and “the best ka (you’re the best)”—are also on the list.
The same Medium article also reported that some FB users had encountered difficulties in activating and seeing Text Delight animations, crediting this to differences in the users’ country and language settings.
In 2018, Facebook said there is no official list of words that trigger colors and animations under Text Delight, adding it just wants the features to be fun and unexpected and have users “discover the effects themselves.”
CrowdTangle found 38 posts and re-posts published since July 29 by local FB pages and public FB groups carrying the spurious security-check claim. They collectively garnered nearly 23,600 interactions from FB users, with posts in groups Wowowin Supporter GMA7, ML DiscipleGaming Group, and iNSECTiON FAN’s OFFICIAL receiving the most interactions.
These are aside from the reposts of at least four private Filipino netizens, which already got a cumulative total of over 5,200 reactions, 36,200 comments, and 69,700 shares to date.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
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