A clickbait advertising campaign has misappropriated the photograph of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines star, Nick Stahl, to falsely advertise an article titled “Actors Who Have Died in 2020 So Far This Year…” .
Nick Stahl, who played John Connor in the third Terminator movie, is very much still alive and kicking and has numerous upcoming projects in the pipeline; including ‘Hunter Hunter‘ which is currently in post-production.
The advert distributed by the Outbrain network was targeting news websites, and went as far as to be featured in the sidebar of CNN‘s website, which goes to show the scale and reach of misinformation.
The ads distributed by the network are randomized, and not handpicked by the websites they are displayed on.
The post featuring Nick Stahl is a tactic of arbitrage – and many of us have experienced this online. As an example: you visit a website based on a clickbait title and / or an image in an advert, then you find yourself trapped in a slideshow, with the content which attracted your attention initially either, never appearing, or appearing at the very end of the slideshow.
It would be very easy for fans of Nick, and Terminator Fans‘, concerns to grow, especially after the actor went missing a few years ago – though the actor has turned his life around since then and strengthened his career, and we are looking forward to seeing his future work.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has also been the victim of death hoaxes in the past, and thankfully these kind of claims / misinformation get cleared up quickly.
Source: Snopes Fact Check
