An image shared on Facebook claims the CEO of the popular crowdfunding website GoFundMe said, “I run a website that hosts popularity contests where if you lose, you die.”

Verdict: False

The quote actually comes from a skit from the parody YouTube channel College Humor.

Fact Check: 

The Facebook image shows a screen grab of a tweet showing four stills from an alleged interview with GoFundMe’s CEO. “I run a website that hosts popularity contests where if you lose, you die,” the person being interviewed is quoted as saying. “Would you be doing all right?”

However, the man being interviewed is not actually the CEO of GoFundMe. Through a reverse image search, Check Your Fact found that the image actually comes from a comedy sketch posted by the parody YouTube channel College Humor in 2019, not a genuine interview with Cadogan.

The sketch identifies Dan Spoon as GoFundMe’s CEO, but in reality, Rob Solomon was the CEO of GoFundMe when the skit was released. Cadogan became the current CEO of the company in March. Neither Cadogan nor Solomon bear any physical resemblance to the man in the interview with Cadogan being bald and Solomon having dark brown hair, unlike Spoon who has red hair.

The skit is seemingly based on comments made by Solomon. In January 2019, then-CEO Solomon told CBS News that 33 percent of the campaigns on GoFundMe go towards raising money for medical care, though that was not the original purpose of the website. (RELATED: Did Kayleigh McEnany Give Lesley Stahl A Blank Book Of The Trump Administration’s Healthcare Achievements?)

“When we started in 2010, it wasn’t purposefully set up and built to be a substitute for medical insurance,” Solomon said. “We weren’t ever set up to be a health care company and we still are not. But over time, people have used GoFundMe for the most important issues they are faced with.”