Source: TOBIAS SCHWARZ / Getty
Facebook has finally removed a page that claimed to be connected to the Black Lives Matter Global Network after CNN revealed it was a fraud. With close to 700,000 followers, the page, titled “Black Lives Matter,” scraped at least $100,000 from unsuspecting wallets amid “fundraising” efforts to support racial justice initiatives across the nation. It turns out that the page was actually run by a white man in Australia. Oh, and BLM’s founders asked Facebook to remove the page a while ago.
“These fake BLM accounts and fake BLM people literally stealing money off of Black death is so stomach churning I can’t even begin to explain,” founder Patrisse Cullors tweeted on Monday. “We told FB over and over again to shut that shit down.”
Last week, ahead of Mark Zuckerberg’s questioning by members of Congress, the social media platform announced its decision to exercise new measures to beef up its identity verification process. “This will make it much harder for people to administer a page using a fake account, which is strictly against our policies,” site officials wrote on April 6.
But is it too late? And why did it take national media coverage for Facebook to make a move? (That’s a rhetorical question.)
BLM later released a statement, saying: “We live in a digital world, and it’s extremely important that platforms like Facebook and Twitter do their due diligence with users so that supporters of our movement, and movements like ours, aren’t misled and that resources aren’t misappropriated.”
Read CNN’s original report here.
https://twitter.com/OsopePatrisse/status/983527299214589952
In Other Media News:
- Issa Rae and Yara Shahidi are Marie Claire’s Fresh Faces.
- The Atlantic fired a columnist over controversial abortion remarks.
- Facebook just topped CNN as a political news source for millennials.
Media Studies is CASSIUS’ weekly look at news, moves, and mess-ups in the wild world we call “The Industry.” Got a tip? Email Stephanie Long: slong(at)ionedigital(dot)com.
