Mutual aid spam is becoming a problem on the Fediverse.
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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.
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@atomicpoet @fediverse THX for putting this clearly on the table, I had this scepticism for some time already ...
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@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.
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That's not mutual aid, that's scam spam. Report it.
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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
