More than 120 former employees of petition website Change.org have accused the company of profiting from a petition demanding justice for George Floyd when it asked users to ‘chip in’ or provide funding to promote the petition on various platforms.
In a Medium posting on June 10, the former employees addressed the letter to Change.org CEO Ben Rattray, acting CEO Nick Allardice and lead investor Reid Hoffman, raising “extreme concerns” over the way the company is handling donations received from users who have signed its #BlackLivesMatter petitions.
The George Floyd petition, for example, has more than 16 million signatures and the company has declared it as the “most signed petition in Change.org’s history” in a posting on June 7.
However, the open letter explained that whenever the company includes a feature asking users “chip in” by sending in at least US$3 (RM12) to promote the petition to a larger audience, those donations do not go towards Floyd’s family or causes fighting for Black lives.
“Rather, these contributions serve to market the petition and Change.org itself via billboards and digital ads,” the open letter stated.
According to Change.org, it has promoted Floyd’s petition via emails to more than 20 million people, placed ads across social media and more than 100 billboards in New York City and Minneapolis.
It also accused the company of “siphoning resources” away from organisations that are committed towards improving Black lives. At the same time, the letter also claimed that Change.org is hosting troubling petitions such as those from users wanting to label Black Lives Matter as a “terrorist group” and generating revenues from such petitions as well.
The open letter asked the company to take immediate action, including disclosing the amount of money it has generated from Floyd's petition and donating the funds to his family or organisations working towards ending anti-Black violence.
“We also ask for a similar disclosure and donation of funds raised by the multi-million signature petitions calling for justice for Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery,” adding they hope the company will redirect the funds by June 30.
Change.org responded to the open letter saying it has “temporarily disabled” the chip-in feature on “some of the largest petitions” on the site, according to The Verge.
However, it declined to commit towards donating the funds to an outside group.
“We take these requests from our former colleagues seriously. Led by current Black staff, we’re actively listening and working on how that contribution can be of most service to the historic movements for racial justice taking action across our country right now,” a representative told The Verge.
The petition started by user Kellen S now has an 18 million signatures goal. It was created to get the attention of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and district attorney Mike Freeman to charge the police officers involved in Floyd's death.
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