The YourAnonNews Fundraising Scandal

The long story short of it is that in April 2013, Anonymous (YourAnonNews) on Twitter (a popular Anonymous Twitter account with over 1 million followers), started an Indiegogo campaign: Anonymous Wants To Start Reporting The News

YourAnonNews raised ~$54,000 (their goal was $2000) from the public in order to build an Anonymous-branded news website. Donors of specific amounts were promised a #YAN logo T-shirt, hoodie, or mug. The donation gifts were never sent out, and the site has still not gone up.

Indiegogo has since removed the campaign from their website for violation of their site’s terms and conditions. Any donors who have questioned where their #YAN swag is were immediately mocked talked down to, and blocked by anyone involved in the YourAnonNews project (this includes JΛCKΛL ΛNON (JackalAnon) on Twitter, Emmi Einstein (EisMC2) on Twitter, and Dell Cameron (dellcam) on Twitter, who uses his real name, but contributes to Anonymous in various capacities.

In late October, I asked for a status update and was promised one by both Emmi & Dell off the record. Both fell through, and when I began asking questions publicly, I was blocked by all parties (all of which supported me up until the point where I questioned them).

Having blown the whistle on both Bank of America and Anonymous, I can tell you that there is absolutely no difference. Human nature compels supporters to dismiss any naysayers, silence any whistleblowers and other detractors, and compromise personal ethics in order to preserve the strength of the brand.

Anonymous is just like every other organization – compartmentalized so nobody knows who’s responsible for what, and when something goes down, everyone points fingers and covers their own a$$.

The fluid and unorganized nature of Anonymous only seems different than existing power structures. Much like communism, the real world application ends up as corrupt as you could’ve predicted.