The official Black Lives Matter Facebook page has 319,332 "likes." A fake Black Lives Matter page ran by white men in Australia gathered almost double that number... nearly 700,000 followers.
According to CNN, a minimum of $100,000 was donated to the false page during its Facebook run. Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement believed that they were sending money to a cause they believed in. It was almost the exact opposite. Instead of supporting a movement that seeks to end the unjust racial tyranny that is spreading through the US like a disease, the money was transferred to Australian bank accounts.
After CNN contacted both Paypal and Patreon, all fundraising campaigns connected to the fake page were suspended. According to the news site: "Only after almost a week of emails and calls between CNN and Facebook about this story did Facebook suspend the page, and then only because it had suspended a user account that administrated the page."
Ian Mackay, who belongs to the National Union of Workers in Australia, has been tied to the page. Mackay and one other man have been suspended while the National Union of Workers investigates the scandal. CNN, who seems cares about Black Lives Matter more than Facebook does, investigated the situation further, and found that Mackay was connected to several other pages and sites that alluded to supporting racial inequality falsely.
Do your research before supporting causes online.
