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.
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.
Unfortunately, email solved the spam problem by becoming centralized AF. Now everything requires a “reputation”.
“Email solved the spam problem by becoming centralizing” yeah most of the spam I get is from gmail or has a reply-to header with gmail address
That’s just the spam that gets through! On my ancient ISP-provided email it’s primarily distributed via compromised accounts from the same provider. And what I see targeting the corporate world tends to come from newly setup email servers or newly setup accounts on paid email providers
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.
That’s why I think the history of the U.S. phone system is so important. AT&T had to be dragged into interoperability by government regulation nearly every step of the way, but ended up needing to invent and publish the technical standards that made federation/interoperability possible, after government agencies started mandating them. The technical infeasibility of opening up a proprietary network has been overcome before, with much more complexity at the lower OSI layers, including defining new open standards regarding the physical layer of actual copper lines and switches.
Yeah, the other day I saw a lot of posts like “I am from palestine, my home is destroyed please donate to help”… Spam is probably the significant problem on fedi
Funnily enough, I haven’t seen many instances delicated to just spam, like there was conerns about. Its mostly from .world or mastodon.social
That’s not mutual aid that’s charity. Mutual aid is mutually beneficial to both parties.
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 them.
In the long run, whitelisting may become the norm for federation instead of blacklisting.
Tell them I’ll do it for $495
I’ll be their mate if they pay me £400.
…
What kind of friend are we talking about?
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.
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.
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]
I only ever got one. I feel so rejected!
😭 I didn’t get any. Why don’t Polish egirls like me?
I got one about an hour after I made my Mastodon account. found me pretty fucking fast.
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.
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
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 the graphics card helps to clear the hair.
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.
Careful! Might be a bobcat.
Ssssshhhh…
Dear comrade Laser, ✊★🚩
the fascist Melon Muskrat needs to be destroyed. The last couple of weeks I have been practicing propaganda of the deed and marked Tesla swasticars appropriately all over my state. Here’s a photo with proof of a recent artwork of mine.
Fighting this essential antifascist fight in these times of techno-feudal-nazi takeover costs me a lot of time and also money for supplies like spray cans, bus tickets, burner phones, and now also legal costs.
Last week the fucking pigs (ACAB) caught me when a petit bourgeois snitch reported me and now I’m in legal trouble. The class traitors now want to squeeze 3500 $ from me.
Your solidarity and mutual aid is essential for me and my comrades to continue the fight against tyranny. Every little thing helps.
Revolutionary thanks and Antifascist greetings
Secure Monero XMR transfer:
monero:83XjbrEebhaZjgyVYZUjsZ4cF43UhQNHKBd6UUqPwmEuGLEoDGs67ebMg7nDLnj65bCsqKfPwGzuR3a1318u4fQbMWV8U4xYou can send it using https://stealthex.io/ or https://changenow.io/ for example with a credit card or if you own other crypto.
no pasarán. hasta la victoria siempre. ✊
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.
Whoa, is this from Mastodon?
@[email protected] 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.
I can submit a post to Lemmy by mentioning the community handle in my post
That’s why I thought you came from Mastodon; they have the same feature.
@Feathercrown Actually, you can do that with any Fediverse service, not just Mastodon.
Yes…
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
Personally only seen one asking for help and it was just a fella in my instance (super small) saying hey if u live in ___ my friend needs a place to crash at, retoot if possible (sounds super legit)
“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.
At the beginning of the pan, someone was selling nudes to cover expenses. I think I sent twenty bucks because I could and she was cute and whatever. But then the person started messaging me about trying to get more money (for her and her sister) and it just felt like a scam and I became very cynical about it.
Btw, I slept funny last night and I have a neck cramp. Please send money. /s
