Is it okay to beg for money on Mastodon?

Only Ohm

Isn't the point of decentralization that there's room for servers that have a wide range of different policies, and for servers that have no policy at all?

Darkstar

@randahl I usually mute or block the accounts. I agree with your points, personally, but if some instances want to promote community help like this they should be allowed to do so. As already pointed out, not hard to mute/block the accounts.

Dave Sanderson 🇨🇦🍁

@randahl

There’s other vehicles to solicit funds for various requirements, ie GoFundMe or Buy Me a Coffee.

Requests for direct funds on Mastodon should be limited to keeping the instances operating.

Gabriel Pettier

@randahl i think not all request are going to be legit, but some certainly are, it's hard to know the difference, and it's hard to tell people they shouldn't ask if they need help, it's to each of us to decide when we are confident enough to give, how comfortable we are with the risk of either giving to someone who is taking advantage, or not giving to someone who needs it.

Filters are rarely perfect, you can generally only trade false positives for false negatives.

Randahl Fink

@bodhipaksa I fully understand your concern about the word begging. Do you have any suggestions for a more neutral term?

I am simply trying to find a well-known word to describe direct person to person aid (a citizen of Gaza requesting donations) as opposed to organised aid (e.g. Red Cross aid).

Randahl Fink

@only_ohm yes.

I just noticed that there is no policy about this on mastodon.social for instance.

Gondor

@randahl
If someone unknown would tag me (personally) begging for money i'd mute/block instantly bc of above reasons.
If that'd happen repeatedly i'd set up a filter or something.

Don't think it should be a generalised policy of the fediverse. Generalised policies tend to "go to far".
One idea: Question/report to the admin of the beggingacount instance? "Verified/legitimate? Can you provide a source if?" But only if one feels like it could be real.

Bodhipaksa

@randahl "Requests for financial assistance" is one way I might put it. Often people in the Fediverse call it mutual aid: so "mutual aid requests" would be another way to put it.

Jonas 🇩🇰 🇬🇱

@randahl Good question. I have the same experience and noticed the same picture of starving kids in different profiles. Could be a potential problem for Mastodon if people finds it unsafe to be here. Just my opinion.

Dario Zanette

@randahl

@devol interesting question (from other istances).

Mx. Luna Corbden 🐸

@Jonasdahl @randahl I skimmed the replies and I don't see that anyone mentioned this.

For Gaza in particular, there is a website for verifying the asker is really from Gaza. It's something like Gaza Verified. After being vetted, the asker puts a link in their bio that confirms.

There are however scammers claiming to be verified when they aren't, and I think some even use a fake domain name. So it's good to hunt down what the real site is before relying on this method. Should be able to search Fedi for info — they have an account.

Edit: This seems to be the real one. I'll dig a like deeper to be sure: https://mastodon.ar.al/@gazaverified

Edit: Yes, I'm confident that's legit.

There has been further discussion of this issue (specifically wrt Gaza and whether askers are scams) if you search "gaza verified" on Mastodon.

Nomdeb

@randahl I do not respond to direct requests from unknown people, however dear to my heart their cause or circumstances may be. I may respond to people I know (or have been following for a while) either for themselves, or who personally know a person and share details. Like you, I donate to recognized aid organizations only, otherwise.

Bill Jorth

@randahl I ignore the requests. I don't have a way to carefully evaluate the requests and I don't havce the time.

Only Ohm

@randahl

Incidentally, @aral, do you want to weigh in on this? It seems like your bailiwick.

Parade du Grotesque 💀

@randahl

It's called 'mutual aid' and it is something accepted on Mastodon.

It's based on the idea that you may be able to help today, but also that you may need help yourself tomorrow.

Martin Seeger

@randahl As long as it doesn’t drown out other content, I would not introduce rules.

Robin Barton

@randahl I agree that a policy is needed because I get the same thing and I suspect scams are part of this

Em & future cats 🇺🇦🐈🏳️‍🌈

@randahl I get these messages too, I do feel bad that I can’t tell if they’re legitimate or not. However, I have come to the realization that if it is legitimate they will ask the whole family of mastodon for help with a hashtag, or be a part of an organization as you said. I do think that having this kind of resource is a good thing, but we should treat “direct messages” as potential scams. Obviously, if you know this person irl, then you can always verify that you wanna help and how to do it.

Randahl Fink

@bodhipaksa I appreciate the suggestion. I was actually editing the post right now, but I ended up cancelling the edit, because I am not sure readers will understand precisely what I mean using your term.

I need to reflect on this.

Stewart

@randahl I mute them... which can be time consuming. There's far too many for me to afford supporting these individuals and as you said, it's hard to validate whether they are genuine.