Mutual aid spam is becoming a problem on the Fediverse.
And to be sure, I’m not against mutual aid. What I am against is spam.
This person has not verified who she is – or even if the profile picture is hers. Additional research on her name states she is a scammer with a record of grifting. I am therefore skeptical that any donations will help anyone in need.
Folks, please be cautious with mutual aid requests. Yes, people sometimes need help. But people also lie.
@fediverse@lemmy.world
@atomicpoet @fediverse I’m glad someone brought this up. I basically assume all mutual aid posts are fraudulent unless strictly verifiable.
There is an entire sub on here somewhere that is only for mutual aid. The sob stories in there are batshit crazy.
Yeah, mutual aid works on the local level or in insular communities like long-term discord groups with a tight group of regular members. With community mutual aid, I’m generally in favor of just taking people at their word. If they say they need help, give them help. No need to interrogate them like the food stamp office will. You prevent people from abusing the system by simply not granting endless requests from the same person. Or if someone needs severe aid, at that point you can start actually verifying their story, helping them access government benefits, helping them find employment, etc.
But that kind of open approach works for in-person aid. It doesn’t work for anonymous online aid, where someone can use bots to spin up hundreds of convincing profiles each begging for money.
I just don’t think mutual aid works well in an online context. The only online context it works in is among communities like small discord groups where people know each other for years. But on a lemmy or mastadon-type service? Mutual aid is impractical. Any people asking for aid should be directed to local groups that can help them in person.
I see a lot of teenagers falling for the “I’m a Gazan and need help getting out.” accounts too.
I agree, and I believe that tapping in to and participating in local networks and groups whether they be fully or partially online and/or in person is beneficial for both ones self and ones community. It seems to me it will be these networks that make much of the difference between survival of large populations and large scale disasters. Community organizing is so important.
How is this mutual aid spam? This is by definition not mutual. It’s begging.
Mutual aid is a common term for people in a group helping each other. It doesn’t imply reciprocal transactions. But by all means, let’s ignore the topic and pick apart the exact wording.
It’s not ignoring the topic. Mutual aid is an organized operation. Literally says it the link. This is not mutual aid. The topic is about “mutual aid spam” which this is not at all an example of “mutual aid”. This is just begging or panhandling or scamming.
They might not have known what mutual aid is and you explained it very well with the first two sentences. The last sentence doesn’t serve any useful purpose if they didn’t know.
People do solicit donations, as on just about every public forum. I really wouldn’t call it a problem on lemmy at this point, but a rule against it except in communities where it’s encouraged wouldn’t be a terrible idea. Somebody who is interested in doing it could start a Please Help community specifically for these requests, requiring some form of verification. Seems like running it could turn into a lot of work tho.
Yep.
I feel the fediverse should lean towards “overly aggressive” when combatting spam, before it takes root, even with all the negatives that brings.
I agree. E-mail is the original federated service. And 50 years later e-mail spam remains a big problem. I hope Fedi projects can get spam mitigations on-par with email before spammers start getting serious about this place.
I’d argue that telephones are the original federated service. There were fits and starts to getting the proprietary Bell/AT&T network to play nice with devices or lines not operated by them, but the initial system for long distance calling over the North American Numbering Plan made it possible for an AT&T customer to dial non-AT&T customers by the early 1950’s, and set the groundwork for the technical feasibility of the breakup of the AT&T/Bell monopoly.
We didn’t call it spam then, but unsolicited phone calls have always been a problem.
What we really need (and have always needed) is an update to the legal frameworks that classify what networks are and what protections are in place for users to ensure interoperability. The Internet has been the wild west for too bloody long, and the extractors and their monopolies need to be put away. That’s why they have been so happy to jump in with Donny Diaper at this point, because he’s letting them not only continue with impunity, but bring back company scrip.
@fediverse @atomicpoet Yep! Majority of them are questionable, even those who claim they were “manually” verified by some supposedly “well-known” person. Even in the ATmosphere network, it’s the same.
I don’t think mutual aid can work well like that on the internet. Works great in person, works OK for GoFundMe-type stuff like “I had something happen to me that will take a lot of money to fix”. Too easy to scam and grift for small stuff like this though, where for all you know they’re just a very clever dog on the internet.
Charity is not the same as mutual aid anyways, even though I have also seen “mutual aid” requests on the Fediverse that were clearly asking for charity.
How would you differentiate the two?
Can you just tell me lmao i dont wanna read an essay
Well you asked a question with a complicated answer. Dean Spade is a prolific and respected writer and organizer, and his thoughts on the matter are relatively concise compared to the volumes upon volumes written by his predecessors in anarchist thought.
im curious about they differentiate it themselves as a person not how an academic defines it.
The title already gives it away 😜
it doesnt and its why i asked lol then i opened the link and saw its over 10 paragraphs
I for one am not willing to feed a milk-bone addiction, no matter how good a boy he is.
I don’t think mutual aid can work well like that on the internet. Works great in person,
That can be an incredibly privileged position to be in to say. Some people are in situations so bad in their meatspace life that “the random internet” is actually more trustworthy.
That’s not mutual aid, that’s scam spam. Report it.
One problem with reporting private messages on Lermy is, as an admin i don’t see who sent the message. I only see who reported it. And i don’t have any actlon available, other than marking the report as handled.
with reported posts, i can ban the poster. With reported messages i’d have to ask the reporter who it was, trust their answer, search for the account manually and then i could ban. Not really efficient or fast if there ever was a spam wave.
of course sparmers could then just register a new account on a open instance and i might need to defederates which would lead to a fractured landscape of spammy open instances and likely inactive private instances.
there’s also not even rudimantary spam filtering in lemmy.
The main saving grace is that Lemmy is too small to attract a ton of spam yet.
maybe some of the above is just due my pick of clients (jerboa and the web interface), and there’s better tools? If so, i’d love to hear. But as things stand right now, there’s a lot to be desired
That’s not mutual aid that’s charity. Mutual aid is mutually beneficial to both parties.
This is nothing, on hexbear there’s a person pretending to be like half a dozen different Palestinians with different fraudulent GoFundMe. They cook up a new persona like every other week using pictures they scrape from the media and then run it through an AI filter.
Sorry but that’s just funny.
It’s like grifting Trump supporters.
Was that a PM or a post?
Yep I’ve already gotten a couple messages like this with an image of a random lady attached:
Hi, I’m Nicole! I’m a proud Polish girl from Toronto (29 y/o)
I’m currently taking the pre-health sciences program at George Brown College hoping to get into the medical field someday!
You can add me on Friendica: [REDACTED]
and join my discord here: [REDACTED]
Hi, I’m
Nicolewizardbeard! I’m aproudaromaticPolishAbyssalgirltube sock with googly eyes fromTorontothe space between your walls (29 y/o50 ft)I’m currently taking the
pre-health sciences program at George Brown Collegesocks from your dryer hoping toget into the medical fieldfind a broodmother for the spawn that will form the ranks of my holy army someday!You can’t add me on Friendica. It’s far too late for that. Far far too late for anyone to do anything to stop this.
Your socks may be returned to you but they may never be the same.
I only ever got one. I feel so rejected!
I got one about an hour after I made my Mastodon account. found me pretty fucking fast.
😭 I didn’t get any. Why don’t Polish egirls like me?
@fediverse@lemmy.world
Whoa, is this from Mastodon?
@Feathercrown@lemmy.world No, this account is specifically from Akkoma. I have also submitted posts from my Pixelfed account.
I can submit a post to Lemmy by mentioning the community handle in my post. Such is the magic of the Fediverse.
I was just offered 500$ to be someone’s friend. Of course, I refused - my friendship is worth much more than that!
But it’s… concerning that we’ve got this sudden spike in spam.
The great thing about the fediverse is that it is harder to censor: as long as you find one instance where you can publish some information, you can publish it.
The bad thing about the fediverse is that it is also harder to moderate: as long as a spammer or troll finds one instance from which they can send unwanted messages, they will be able to send them.
In the long run, whitelisting may become the norm for federation instead of blacklisting.
Tell them I’ll do it for $495
I’ll be their mate if they pay me £400.
