Facebook's Largest Black Lives Matter Page Is Fake

2018 has been a year of struggle for Facebook, to say the least. Stuck between two bombshell scandals over allegations of fake news manufacturing and privacy data breach in the years and months leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it almost seems as if Facebook is living the nightmares of dystopian techno-political drama straight out of a Black Mirror episode.

And as the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg stands before the Congress today to testify in the Cambridge Analytica data breach inquiry, yet another PR fiasco has surfaced on the horizon: The largest Black Lives Matter page on Facebook, which boasts nearly 700,000 followers, or almost twice as many as the verified Black Lives Matter page, is fake.

The page has been linked to numerous online fundraising efforts that have collected more than $100,000 under the guise of being donated to Black Lives Matter causes, using Donorbox, PayPal, Patreon and Classy. Some of the funds from the campaigns were transferred to Australian bank accounts.

According to CNN, BackLivesMatter1, Facebook’s largest community dedicated to the Black Lives Matters movement, is a fundraising scam tied to a middle-aged white man living in Australia, who has organized numerous online fundraising efforts and allegedly collected more $100,000, under the guise of charitable intent, using crowdfunding platforms like Donorbox, PayPal, Patreon and Classy. What is more, some of the funds from the campaigns were transferred to Australian bank accounts.

Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founding members of Black Lives Matter, said that Facebook had been alerted to the fake accounts numerous times to no avail.

Last month we demanded @Twitter to take down the fake twitter BLM account. This month the fake BLM Facebook account was shut down. It’s so unfortunate folks were scammed by fake BLM accounts and people. https://t.co/6WpTYoRcna

— patrisse cullors (@OsopePatrisse) April 10, 2018

The page in question links to Ian Mackay, a National Union of Workers (NUW) official in Australia, which represents thousands of workers throughout the country. In a statement, the union stated that “is not involved in and has not authorized any activities with reference to claims made in CNN’s story.”

The report shows that Mackay registered dozens of website that seemed to prey on issues of civil rights, as well as pornography and Donald Trump. Using his NUW email address Mackay reportedly registered the website “blackpowerfist.com” in April 2015, as well as jesusposts.com, lebronjamez.com, legalizeblacks.com and more. The Facebook page would continually drive traffic to blackpowerfist.com

Mackay has since been suspended by the union “pending the outcome of an investigation.”

In response to CNN's report, the company had initially stated that the page “didn’t show anything that violated our Community Standards.” However, after Facebook suspended the account of BP Parker, an anonymous Facebook account who was listed as an administrator on BlackLivesMatter1, the page was subsequently disabled as well.

Speaking to CNN about his involvement with the page, Mackay said, “I once bought the domain name only and sold it.” Within hours of their conversation, the page was deactivated.

The discovery comes on the heels of various security concerns of Facebook’s ability to properly police their platform. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has series of testimonies before various Senate committees about Facebook’s effectiveness in weeding out nefarious actors, particularly in regards to the various data breaches and Russian meddling in the election.

In a statement released today, Facebook said it will "continue to look into the situation and will take the necessary action in line with [its] policies.”