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
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.
Lol, comments in this thread forgot the ‘mutual’ part of ‘mutual aid’ and miss the point of this post (scams in mutual aid groups)
If you think mutual aid is a one-way street (/ don’t benefit from it), is not for you, block and move on
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.
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.
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
I wish I had approximately double the hours in a given day, and also vastly more coding skill to help in meaningful ways.
It seems sort of odd that comments or messages reported for spam don’t offer any tools. Even a simple url pattern match that gives mods/admins the ability to click a checkbox to remember the link and take some predefined action in the future would be a rudimentary but effective option.
I mean, heck, it’s the fediverse. In my fantasy implementation of an anti-spam approach, it would be possible to federate these lists of untrusted links and assign consensus-based confidence scores for links generated from moderator actions across instances. (With options for instance admins to tailor their own trust scores of other instances, so that each instance can choose for themselves who they trust, just in case a couple rogue instance admins try to poison the spam filter.)
Same concept can be applied to banned accounts, although in that circumstance, I’d suggest they find a way to mask the email address when sharing it. Not that folks won’t just spin up a new email. But, you know. Something is better than nothing.Hopefully that makes sense. I’m losing my mind with sleep deprivation.
“Mutual aid”? Is that what scammers are calling it now? What exactly is “mutual” about this interaction?
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with creating a community where people who are struggling financially can ask for help or plug their GoFundMe or whatever, but allowing these guys to essentially cold call individuals with DMs/Mentions is unacceptable.
I see a lot of people asking for mutual aid, and it’s often “I’ve had a hard day and just want some McDonalds, please help”
OK, that’s not mutual aid, and you shouldn’t be asking for that under that hashtag. if you need help paying your rent, or with gas money so you don’t lose your job, that’s something that appropriate for mutual aid. asking for money for vices should be something you do off the hashtag, or on your OF or something. mutual aid is for people helping where they can, when they can, for problems that are serious and life-altering. and nothing else.
Mutual Aid is not charity. Mutual aid is beneficial for both parties.
Mutual aid for rent would be to join a tenants union so that people can get organized and perform a rent strike.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/tenant-unions-for-the-future/
Mutual Aid for food would be something like Food Not Bombs. (It’s an http site so only sign up if you’re comfortable with that.)
http://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
Charity is not mutual aid.
Is it weird that I’ve never heard this term “mutual aid” before this thread but apparently everyone here knows all about it?
Anyway. There’s just no way I’d give real money to someone asking for it like this because for every real person there must be a dozen scammers at least. It honestly seems crazy to me that this could work and people could send money.
If people are giving money away like this then they’re part of the problem IMO. You’re encouraging scammers, and perpetuating the practice, diverting money away from the people who actually need it.
It isn’t really that odd, considering you’ve only been here a couple of weeks. Mutual Aid is a foundational idea in most if not all anarchist projects and theory.
There may be many scammers, yes, but the goal remains the same - get help to those who need it from those in a position to give it.
As for being part of the problem, I must disagree. Scammers aren’t leeching just this, they’d be present in any system purporting to help others (in gov’t systems this is called fraud), the goal of these grassroots aid projects is to help those who fall through the cracks of more formalized systems and decentralize some aid in case the church/NGO/gov’t can’t or won’t help (see the Hurricane Helene/Katrina responses when FEMA is overwhelmed).
Means-testing recipients is kinda a dick move anyway: those who have demonstrable need will have a harder time getting aid and time/money that should be spent helping are now spent with verification.
Hah.
I’ve probably been kicking around the fediverse longer than you, it’s just this particular account that’s only a few weeks old.
Anyhow, feel free to continue giving money to people asking for it on lemmy i guess.
Fair 'nuff. I hadn’t really considered an alt account.
It’s not really an “alt” account, I just don’t think of user accounts as an extension of my identity, and change very regularly.
Is it an alternative account you use for differing purposes than other accounts?
This is the only account I’ve used since I created this account, and I don’t presently have any intention of using any of my other accounts again at any time.
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.
Its tough cause we want to help people in need but also dont want to be scammed. Theres gotta be a better way to do this!
Seems like a great way to poison the concept of “mutual aid” before most people (such as OP) have even heard of it.
