‘Fake’ Malia Bouattia account keeps trying to meet up with NUS-sceptics

A Facebook account of someone impersonating NUS President Malia Bouattia has been causing quite a stir on Facebook.

The fake profile – which has now been deleted – messaged a number of anti-NUS pages and asked to “meet up”. It also posted a number of aggressive statuses aimed at critics of Malia and the NUS.

One of the statuses read: “All you haters out there, how many of you have your own Wiki page then! Read and weep you bigots!”

Her profile had the phrase “#fuckthetories” written all over it.

Given Malia’s involvement in several campaigns, it’s also hard to believe she’d not be involved in any groups

Malia’s fake account was first spotted when it attempted to join the Sheffield NUSceptics group on Facebook. Admins noticed that the account had been activated less than five days prior to attempting to join.

Why Malia would be interested in joining a campaign to leave the union she is head of, at a university she doesn’t go to should have been pretty suspicious in itself.

Sheffield NUS Sceptics members were advised to ignore the person, especially if the account attempted to add anyone. Things became even more bizarre, however, when people actually checked “Malia’s” page out.

The supposedly fake account

Suspicion around the account’s authenticity was further aroused by the fact that it only had 25  Facebook friends, many of whom were spam accounts. Not a likely situation for the recent president elect of the National Union of Students.

Phrases such as “#FucktheTories” in the biography section also failed to reflect the professional level one would expect from a student union president.

The content of the account was also questionable.

Seems pretty infantile…

Posts ranged from the above to “Thinking that black is the best” and a long post from May 2nd

It read: “To those sexists, those racists, those Islamophobes, who want to disaffiliate from NUS because of me, president, being black Muslim woman, I only have one thing to say – you are not welcome. You lost! Liberation WON.”

Things took a stranger turn however when “Malia” asked to meet a member of the Birmingham NUSceptics team, to attempt mediation over the university’s upcoming decision on whether it wants to remain in the NUS.

The message had poor grammar, and contained typos such as “position” instead of “positive” and “NHS” instead of “NUS”

After alerting other members, the receiver of the messages  was advised that the group would be willing to speak to Malia as a society, but that it wasn’t fair for only one person to attempt mediation with the president.

Investigations into the account by NUSceptics, however, quickly raised doubts over its authenticity. When asked for proof that it was really Malia, the person running the account promptly deleted it.

A spokeswoman for Malia has suggested the account is not associated with the NUS President. She added: “It definitely looks fake”.

We have approached Malia Bouattia for comment.