hexbear

I mostly donate to Palestinian gofundmes because I figured scammers would get more money by pretending to be an Israeli having a panic attack because they saw a Palestinian flag once on top of, you know, them trying to survive a genocide. I don't think there's any real way to distinguish between a sincere person and a scammer in an anonymous forum.

I like how, no matter how many times I say that I didn’t blow all that money on drugs, that I don’t spend all the money I receive on drugs, this shit just persists and persists.

Nobody was honest with me when I posted threads asking if everything was alright, because it seemed like something was up.

In case this feedback is relevant, the comm has been abused by certain members spamming posts multiple times per day every day, so I blocked it 🤷

I think it is important to center people who use it; their opinions to me are more relevant in this situation than my own.

Posts similar to the one that prob. initiated this discussion shouldn't be allowed on that comm. Such claims can't really be verified either way and just lead to drama.

And more of an observation: Use of the comm was pretty rare for a long time, but it's increased dramatically as time has gone on. I think hexbears with both the desire and means to donate was always a pretty small group due to the site's similarly small size, and said group's limited funds are increasingly stretched across both more requests and the rising cost of living in general, leading to a higher chance of some requests going partially or wholly unfulfilled. I suppose I'm saying this to let those seeking help know that, if that happens to them, it's not necessarily a lack of caring, there's just unfortunately only so much money to to go around and they had unlucky timing. It's no one's fault, just a reality of capitalism sadly.

If someone wants to donate and not publicize on their account, they could report the post with a message saying "I've DMd this user", which goes right to the mods and admins, who could create a comment on their behalf "A user has sent you a DM". Just something that came to mind just now. Obviously, that puts mods in the loop, which is more work, so take that into account. This obviously works best on the web interface, some apps have canned report options, not sure if all of them have a freeform box to enter text into.

i think i know about the post you're referring to and while i don't know about the veracity of that user's claims (i didn't really engage with that post) my initial thought on it is that those types of claims should be sent directly to the mod team rather than to the community, because of the potential of abuse.

no matter the circumstances of need i would like to believe that everyone who is asking for help is because they need help, and don't want to judge, nor do i feel like anyone is in a position to judge the worthiness of people to receive aid.

if there is a problem with "scammin" well ... then that's a big issue, but not one that should be hashed out in the forum because it could quickly get messy and just feels very against what the community stands for.

thanks fer askin, that's my .02

i think maybe it would help if people knew when donation goals were being met. like if we had a basic verification system that kind of worked on the honor system it might help. something like this:

user posts request with amount,
donator comments something like "DM Sent",
user updates after amount is received

i can think of a few issues so far:

1. some people lurk/donate without posting
2. there may be opsec issues we could fix by encouraging donator alts
3. it may deincentivize people from donating to those who aren't using the system

i'd like some input on how to fix the issues because i do think we can fix the transparency issues and make people more confident donating

Is there a way we could sticky a thread for meta discussion of mutual aid posts so at least they're all contained? I know users including myself have had feelings about the comm and there really isn't a good way to express them as it stands. Completely not allowing criticism (good or bad) is why a lot of us left other social media platforms and I'd hate for this place to get that way. I'm also not "online" enough to know if there already is a mechanism in place for what I'm talking about. If there is, maybe it should be more apparent to people like me who have a more luddite approach to the Internet.

I think regular education about mutual aid would be helpful. For example, while anonymity does mean capacity for harm and then reacting meta posts, look at what happens when donating to, e.g., charities: you end up mostly paying for PMC paychecks and tax breaks for corpos. Edit: maybe adding an explainer comment pinned in every mutual aid post would be a good way to implement this.

I do think that having a vouching system is the best way and my understanding is that this is basically the status quo to some extent. You may want to define some kind of unvouching process in cases where there are verifiable issues. I think this will actually increase trust and donations if communication and messaging are on-point.

So re: meta posts, I think there needs to be more process, not just allowing meta posts and comments. This requires more mod intervention, so I'm sorry to be basically volunteering others' time, but I do think it will be beneficial to have meta posts go through a filter and deliberative process and with clear results and strategic messaging. The alternative, i.e. status quo, is likely to be ad hoc discouragement. The coupling of "this is why you should keep helping our comrades" to any meta posts is very important.