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.

@[email protected]

  • @[email protected]English
    111•15 hours ago

    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.

    • poVoqEnglish
      67•14 hours ago

      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.

      • XNXEnglish
        8•13 hours ago

        How would you differentiate the two?

          • XNXEnglish
            8•10 hours ago

            Can you just tell me lmao i dont wanna read an essay

            • @[email protected]English
              0•3 hours ago

              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.

            • @[email protected]English
              9•10 hours ago

              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.

              • XNXEnglish
                4•8 hours ago

                im curious about they differentiate it themselves as a person not how an academic defines it.

            • poVoqEnglish
              1•10 hours ago

              The title already gives it away 😜

              • XNXEnglish
                3•8 hours ago

                it doesnt and its why i asked lol then i opened the link and saw its over 10 paragraphs

    • @CarbonatedPastaSauceEnglish
      14•14 hours ago

      I for one am not willing to feed a milk-bone addiction, no matter how good a boy he is.

    • @[email protected]English
      -4•13 hours ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•2 hours ago

        It might be better for them but it’s not better for the internet strangers, now there is an unknown beggar in their space.