Change.org Removes Petition to Reinstate Travis Scott at Coachella Due to 60,000 Fake Signatures

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A petition to reinstate Travis Scott as a headliner of Coachella 2022 has been removed due to fraud.

Change.org has removed the petition by fans to allow Travis Scott to perform at this year’s Coachella festival. Scott was set to headline the festival before the Astroworld tragedy left ten people dead. Travis Scott was quickly dropped from Coachella and other lineups in the aftermath of that event.

Fans created a Change.org petition earlier this month to see Travis Scott return to the Coachella lineup. More than 70,000 signatures were collected in the first three days of the petition being available. But yesterday, the number dropped from around 71,000 to just 5,000. Nearly 60,000 signatures were removed due to ‘fraudulent activity’ Change.org engineers detected.

“Our team identified patterns of fraudulent activity and removed the corresponding signatures that were seen on this petition,” the company’s statement to BuzzFeed reads. Since that removal, the petition itself has been taken offline entirely and is no longer available.

Meanwhile, a petition to remove Travis Scott as a Goldenvoice performer has reached 64,000 signatures and counting. “With the recent tragic and unnecessary death at Travis Scott’s Astroworld concert, due to Scott’s own gross negligence and sheer lack of compassion for human life, we ask AEG, Paul Tollet, and Goldenvoice to remove his as performer at all of their festivals,” that petition page reads. It is still active and gathering petitions, even though Travis Scott is not performing at this year’s Coachella festival.

What happened at Astroworld?

Footage on social media from the festival shows the crowd surging toward the stage. Several people were pressed into an area where they could not escape, leading to severe injury and death for dozens of concertgoers. At least nine people were dead in the immediate aftermath, while another young victim succumbed to his injuries.

Travis Scott issued an apology on social media, but many people felt as though it was insincere. “Thank you everyone for signing this petition,” the Change.org petition to have Scott removed reads.

“After watching Travis Scott’s apology video, it’s very clear that he’s trying to avoid blame in the unnecessary deaths of his fans. At no point in his video “apology” did we think he was genuinely sorry for the loss of lives at his concert.”