Crowdfunding during a pandemic

Abstract

Abstract Crowdfunding has been growing globally in terms of the numbers of campaigns, donors, and money raised. The COVID-19 pandemic created a spike in suffering and need that drove many new people online seeking financial support. The resulting wave of crowdfunding demonstrates the rising influence of this practice and the importance of assessing and responding to its ethical and political shortcomings. The concerns discussed in the previous chapters were on full display during the pandemic, including campaigners sacrificing their privacy to establish their worthiness to receive donations, deep inequities in who received support that also obscured the deep injustices leading to these needs, and a mix of fraudulent campaigns and campaigns that spread misinformation about the causes of and treatments for the COVID-19 coronavirus.