“So I just started hashtagging what I heard the mothers saying in Nigeria which is bring back our girls. … So I started shouting it on social media.” (Via ABC)

Thing is, as The Wall Street Journal reports, that hashtag actually came from by an attorney based in Nigeria. Mosley later denied ever taking credit for the original hashtag. (Via Twitter / @Abu_Aaid)

Then there were these widely-circulated photos. (Via Twitter / @chrisbrown, Twitter / @pdnetwork, Twitter / @tdaniadi)

Turns out, as The New York Times later reported, “The photos are of girls from Guinea-Bissau, more than 1,000 miles from Nigeria, who have no relationship to the kidnappings.”

Critics argue that’s essentially the problem with these social media campaigns — they oversimplify the complexities of events abroad, and even if well-intentioned, rarely affect things on the ground.