Mutual aid spam is becoming a problem on the Fediverse.
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@atomicpoet @fediverse Yes. And we know this from the early e-mail days already ...
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That's not mutual aid that's charity. Mutual aid is mutually beneficial to both parties.
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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.
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Thankfully that would almost certainly be a scam in my country and many others.
I am a 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 countrues that make this plea possible.
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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.
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Who is seriously stupid enough to fall for this?
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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.
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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
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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]
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I would just reply with a guide to shoplifting
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I for one am not willing to feed a milk-bone addiction, no matter how good a boy he is.
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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.
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Don't boost it. If it violates your instance's rules (e.g. it's a scam), report it. Unfollow people that boost it. Mute/block the poster or their content.
I don't might seeing it, and I don't think it is a problem (yet).
Agree that caution is warranted for any request of funds, whatever the requestor wants to call it.
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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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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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Tell them I'll do it for $495
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I can mail you a brand new cat. Good enough?
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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,
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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How would you differentiate the two?
