This stuff is back again? A year or two ago FB and the like was littered with spammers posting fake news that some celeb or other had died or met some tragedy to get people to click it. This stuff is annoying as heck, there’s plenty of spammers, but for some reason this particular brand seems very ubiquitous.
It's because the sites refuse to police misinformation in any form. You want attention on that, you have to say something that someone in charge of that cares about. Falsely reporting their death is an easy, legal and fun way to make a content moderator or site owner or CEO pause and say "hey wait a minute"