Hijacking For Profit
- Don Juice
- Apr 16, 2018
- 2 min read
Recently a story came out about how a very popular Black lives Matter Facebook page was pretty much a fake...considering it was run by a white man in Australia named Ian Mackay how is an employee of the National Union of Workers in Australia. The page generated at least $100,000 during the time it was active, had over 700,000 page likes and tied to online fundraising campaigns where the money that was made was wired back to bank accounts in Australia. All of this comes on the heels of the continued Facebook controversy about how data is being handled by the company. Patrisse Cullors, the founder of the black lives matter movement wrote on Twitter “These fake BLM accounts and fake BLM people literally stealing money off Black Death is so stomach churning I can’t even begin to explain,” she wrote. “Glad it’s down now.”” She has stated that she and her supporters complained to Facebook to shut down the page but were ignored up until now. The National Union of Workers in Australia has suspended Mackay and another person while they investigate. This story is a sad one because here you have a person financially benefitting from the struggle of others for racial equality and justice. Facebook is definitely at fault here, if they were told about how fraudulent the page was but balked at shutting this down then there should be a lawsuit brought against them. But not only that, the guy who was responsible for this also should be held accountable with either adequate prison time or financial compensation for duping people into thinking they were donating to a good cause. In the era of strident fake news and in this case fake fundraisers, it’s essential for people to be wary of donating and to thoroughly do research before giving up their money.
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