About

#FreeBlackCoffee is a hoax campaign orchestrated in late April 2018 by anonymous 4chan users who circulated photoshopped Starbucks coupons falsely claiming to provide "1 free beverage" as an apology for the controversial arrest of two African Americans waiting at a coffee store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Origin

On April 12th, 2018, police arrested two African American men who were allegedly waiting for a friend inside a Starbucks but had not ordered anything. A video of the arrest went viral and subsequently led to an apology from Starbucks and protests led by private citizens. On April 15th, Twitter user @VibeHi uploaded a video of himself successfully demanding a free coffee at a Starbucks location (shown below).

On April 17th, threads began appearing on 4chan's /pol/ board encouraging viewers to tweet out fake Starbucks coupons for free coffees along with the hashtag #FreeBlackCoffee (shown below).^[7]

Spread

That day, conservative YouTubers Mark Dice and RooshV tweeted the coupons (shown below).^[6]

On April 18th, the news site Think Progress^[2] published an article titled "Far-right trolls spread hidden white supremacist messages with fake Starbucks coupons," noting that one of the fake coupons contained a QR code with the "n-word." That day, Snopes^[3] published an article about the hoax titled "Is Starbucks Offering Coupons for Black Customers Only?", listing the claim as "false." Meanwhile, Redditor PapayaSF submitted a post about the fake coupons to /r/4chan,^[4] where it gathered upwards of 2,400 points (97% upvoted) within 14 hours. Also on April 18th, USA Today published an article titled "Fake Starbucks coupon aimed at blacks uses the N-word."

Search Interest

External References