Mutual aid spam is becoming a problem on the Fediverse.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
Tell them I'll do it for $495
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My cat just died chewing through the power cable on my graphics card so I need a new 5090, please help brother
I can mail you a brand new cat. Good enough?
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I can mail you a brand new cat. Good enough?
Careful! Might be a bobcat.
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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.
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.
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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?
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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.
Whoa, is this from Mastodon?
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Whoa, is this from Mastodon?
@[email protected] No, this account is from Akkoma. I can submit a post to Lemmy by mentioning the community handle in my post. Such is the magic of the Fediverse.
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I can mail you a brand new cat. Good enough?
Dear brother in Christ I appreciate your generosity, is it a Siamese cat? I have allergies and my graphics card and the graphics card helps to clear the hair.
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How would you differentiate the two?
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Tell them I'll do it for $495
I’ll be their mate if they pay me £400.
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Mutual aid spam is becoming a problem on the Fediverse.
And to be sure, I'm not against mutual aid. What I am against is spam.
This person has not verified who she is -- or even if the profile picture is hers. Additional research on her name states she is a scammer with a record of grifting. I am therefore skeptical that any donations will help anyone in need.
Folks, please be cautious with mutual aid requests. Yes, people sometimes need help. But people also lie.
@fediverse @atomicpoet Yep! Majority of them are questionable, even those who claim they were "manually" verified by some supposedly "well-known" person. Even in the ATmosphere network, it's the same.
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I agree. E-mail is the original federated service. And 50 years later, e-mail spam remains a big problem. I hope Fedi projects can get spam mitigations on-par with email, before spammers start getting serious about this place.
I'd argue that telephones are the original federated service. There were fits and starts to getting the proprietary Bell/AT&T network to play nice with devices or lines not operated by them, but the initial system for long distance calling over the North American Numbering Plan made it possible for an AT&T customer to dial non-AT&T customers by the early 1950's, and set the groundwork for the technical feasibility of the breakup of the AT&T/Bell monopoly.
We didn't call it spam then, but unsolicited phone calls have always been a problem.
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I was just offered 500$ 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 it.
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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 it.
In the long run, whitelisting may become the norm for federation instead of blacklisting.
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Dear brother in Christ I appreciate your generosity, is it a Siamese cat? I have allergies and my graphics card and the graphics card helps to clear the hair.
No Siamese. Just some mongrel off the streets.
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Careful! Might be a bobcat.
Ssssshhhh....
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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.
Was that a PM or a post?
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No Siamese. Just some mongrel off the streets.
May you be blessed for your generosity on this day! I would love to receive your cat, however in my village there is a small fee for the postage of the animals. I am, of course, willing to cover the fee - however it must be sent to the village post centre by Western Union transfer by the sender. If you send the $3500 I will reimburse you.
