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   Håkan Geijer (hakan_geijer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 03:54:00 JST Håkan Geijer

   Conspiracy theory: a bunch of the "mutual aid" accounts that only ever post about asking for mutual aid and nothing else are an op to waste radicals' money and suck all the air out of the room for people who actually need assistance.

   Zero proof of this, but so many of them are so clearly fake, and this is the exact kind of shit intelligence agencies would love to do.

   With AI being able to rapidly simulate humans, the probability this is happening is only going to go up. But also let's not forget that a bunch of these are almost certainly already scammers.

   • Embed this notice
     Ciggy Bringer of Smoke (ciggysmokebringer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 07:26:59 JST Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

     in reply to

     @hakan_geijer

     I haven't thought of it as a conspiracy or plot or op, but rather just the social physics of 'hey, a bunch of bleeding heart givers, who pride themselves on giving are over here' and that's all it really takes for the entropy to kick in.

   • Embed this notice
     Håkan Geijer (hakan_geijer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 14:41:24 JST Håkan Geijer

     in reply to

     • Ciggy Bringer of Smoke

     @ciggysmokebringer I think this is mostly what is happening but I wonder if there is also an intentional op at play in some cases

   • Embed this notice
     Håkan Geijer (hakan_geijer@kolektiva.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 14:46:26 JST Håkan Geijer

     in reply to

     • JindrⒶ, your locally Euclidean anarchist

     @jindra I only really give money locally so that's my filter. I feel like the red flags online are:

     - only has begposts and boosts of others
     - seemingly over the top number of marginalized identifiers in their profile
     - few follows/followers
     - very specific demands with a sense of urgency
     - lots of hashtags in their profile or post like they're trying to get maximum reach

   • Embed this notice
     JindrⒶ, your locally Euclidean anarchist (jindra@todon.nl)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 14:46:28 JST JindrⒶ, your locally Euclidean anarchist

     in reply to

     @hakan_geijer I was wondering about this. I am inclined to believe people and to be fair I have no idea how to tell apart scams and not scams. If you had some ideas about how to distinguish it, that would be great.

     Also, one solution to this is to just donate money to a fund, which might have more resources to vet people, I recently came across this
     https://afund.info/