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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
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.
There is an entire sub on here somewhere that is only for mutual aid. The sob stories in there are batshit crazy.
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
Mutual aid is a form of [collaborative] political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions, not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on their representatives in government but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable.
Charity comes with eligibility requirements that relate to these moral frameworks of deservingness, such as sobriety, piety, curfews, participation in job training or parenting courses, cooperation with the police, or identifying the paternity of children.
Nonprofitization has reproduced antidemocratic, racist, and colonial relationships between the winners and losers of extractive, exploitative economic arrangements.
Mutual aide is mutual
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.
I for one am not willing to feed a milk-bone addiction, no matter how good a boy he is.
@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.
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.
Same on Bluesky. And they are everywhere. Couple of years ago some accounts did this multiple times on Imgur. Even today occasionally some pop up again, but now the users are quick to call them out…with the admins doing jack shit. Which is classic for that site.
When coming across a sob story my knee jerk reaction is “bullshit”. If you want to give money to charity, do so through a reputable organisation. And don’t trust any rando on the internet.
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 ~~Nicole~~ wizardbeard! I'm a ~~proud~~ aromatic ~~Polish~~ Abyssal ~~girl~~ tube sock with googly eyes from ~~Toronto~~ the space between your walls (~~29 y/o~~ 50 ft)
I’m currently taking the ~~pre-health sciences program at George Brown College~~ socks from your dryer hoping to ~~get into the medical field~~ find 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.
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.
@atomicpoet @fediverse THX for putting this clearly on the table, I had this scepticism for some time already ...
@regineheidorn @fediverse Yeah, people I know boosted her messages—which implies they may have given her money. The thing is, that grifter’s success is going to attract other grifters if this problem isn’t addressed.
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.
…
What kind of friend are we talking about?
Tell them I'll do it for $495
I’ll be their mate if they pay me £400.
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.
@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.
Thankfully that would almost certainly be a scam in my country and many others.
I am an asthmatic. Well controlled by a thrice daily cocktail of medicines. All free at the point of need. Paid for by our taxes.
The true scandal is the countries that make this plea possible.
Who is seriously stupid enough to fall for this?
My cat just died chewing through the power cable on my graphics card so I need a new 5090, please help brother
Was that a PM or a post?
I blocked MutualAid-related tags months ago because there is only so much begging and sob stories that a person can take.
I feel sorry for people who have problems and situations so desperate that they feel the best way to fix them is asking random people on the internet for money, but I just don't know if I can trust them and I absolutely know I can't help everyone.