Many petitions have been circulating on the internet regarding the Black Lives Matter movement but now you have to be careful. A Change.org petition that demanded accountability for the killing of Floyd has been criticized for employing misleading fundraising features.

Source: Change.org

Around 90 former Change.org employees said that the company was not using the funds to help Floyd’s family and was instead increasing the popularity of the campaign itself with the profits.

“These actions constitute Change.org profiting from the death of Black people,” the Medium post reads. “We understand that’s a serious statement to levy, and we don’t take it lightly.”

The petition was started by certain activists that asked Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and local DA Mike Freeman to press charges against the police officers who murdered Floyd. After the petition, one officer was charged with second-degree murder while others were removed from the force. However, the decision was not appreciated and more than 17 million signatures were acquired, demanding the arrest of all the police officers.

Source: Change.org

The petition was criticized after some people began to notice the “chip in” feature. So if you have signed the petition you might have noticed a window that asked you to put in a small donation for the cause. According to reports, more than half a million people donated their money on the website and this was used to place 100 billboards across New York City and Minneapolis with Floyd’s photographs and a link that highlighted the petition.

However, activists believe that the money should have gone to the organizations fighting for Black Lives Matter or to Floyd’s family. “These contributions serve to market the petition and Change.org itself,” the Medium post argues, “siphoning resources away from organizations that are accountable to Black people and equipped to do deeper, long-term, community-based organizing.”

After Medium's post, the “chip in” feature was “temporarily disabled” for almost all the petitions on the site. The employees said that this feature was also wrongfully used during the petitions started in support of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.