Kanye West said in February 2016 that he was $53 million in personal debt and appealed to technology billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page to invest in his ideas. West asked Zuckerberg for $1 billion to help address his debts and develop Donda, his proposed venture spanning fields from fashion and publishing to alternative energy. The reports could not independently verify the state of West’s finances.

West’s appeals drew attention to his existing connections in Silicon Valley. He had pitched Donda to investors, spent time at Apple’s Southern California offices and maintained relationships with technology figures including venture capitalist Ben Horowitz and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. His outreach reflected a broader overlap between entertainment and technology, in which artists seek business opportunities and investors cultivate ties with celebrities.

In response to West’s debt claim, Minnesota graphic designer Jeremy Piatt created a GoFundMe campaign called “Get Kanye Out of Debt.” His appeal invoked West’s declarations that he was the greatest living artist and urged fans to support him as the Medici family had supported artists during the Renaissance. Piatt said the campaign was intended to raise awareness of arts funding and give ordinary people a way to support creative work. One report said the page had raised $35 at publication; another reported $50 by Tuesday afternoon. Piatt said only West or his team could withdraw the funds, and he hoped to contact them. A separate campaign started by Robert Kulik in Washington, D.C., raised nothing and appeared to have been canceled.

West’s financial appeals coincided with the release of his album *The Life of Pablo* on Tidal and the debut of a clothing collection at New York Fashion Week. One report said the album was briefly removed from the streaming service and that fans reported problems obtaining paid downloads; it also said the album had been illegally downloaded more than 500,000 times. A lyric in which West claimed credit for Taylor Swift’s fame drew a response from Swift during her Grammy acceptance speech, when she encouraged young women to focus on their work despite people who might take credit for their accomplishments.

The supplied material also includes a satirical list of unusual crowdfunding campaigns. Examples include a request for $10,000 to fund a round-the-world spiritual journey and a successful appeal that raised more than $1,000 to remove a “420” forehead tattoo. Separate informational notices explain that Twitter users can control location sharing and delete location history, and that Alexa Internet has donated web crawl data to the Internet Archive since 1996 for eventual inclusion in the Wayback Machine.