On
Monday, a Facebook meme went viral in which users were encouraged to “check-in”
to Standing Rock, North Dakota
This
was in order to impede the Morton County Sheriff’s Department’s efforts to
monitor the online activities of water protesters of the Dakota Access
Pipeline.
Social
Media users were encouraged by the meme to falsely check into Standing Rock on
Facebook, and then to post a second post to clarify to confused friends the
user’s true intentions:
“I think we underestimate how often Facebook is used by law
enforcement,” New York student Keshia Pendigrast told VICE News.
“So if my small check-in confuses a sheriff somewhere, I’m
happy.”
Pendigrast
reported that over 65 of her friends had checked into Standing Rock on Monday
morning. It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of people all across the
country have also checked-in.
The
official stance of The Morton County Sheriff’s Dept is that they are not using
Facebook check-ins to gather intelligence. Snopes were also told that if they
were to use geolocation tools to track mobile devices, remote check-ins would
not fool them.
Source
: organicandhealthy.org