I have been in the camp of being hands off in regards to cracking down on potentially scammy behavior in this comm due to the potential of depriving others of life saving aid.
But I do believe that there could be some basic guardrails put in place that could rebuild some trust and prevent scamming.
-
account must be a certain age to post here (maybe a minimum of 3 months or something) brand new accounts that ask for donations immediately upon creation could be banned until they reach that account age.
-
account must have some history of posting outside of the mutual aid comm, enough posting history to build a level of trust. I think we should primarily give to people who are active participants in the site, as it helps us validate their authenticity.
Addendum: exceptions can be made, such as in instances of accounts designed to fundraise for our Palestinian comrades, but they’d need approval by site admins or comm moderators.
I think these requirements are basic enough to filter out more aggregious attempts to scam the community while not providing an insurmountable barrier to aid.
Even if not implimented as comm rules, I think its good practice to take these things into consideration before donating to anyone on here.
If anyone has other proposals that could make sure donations are more likely to go to members of the community instead of scammers, I would like to hear them.
Make “once a day” a hard rule
I don’t want to over explain this, i think the benefit is obvious. It drastically limits what scammers can do.
You get one shot per day (date not hour count who cares THAT much)
That can suck if you’re in need but you ask once a day, make your case, and at least if people find you beneath help or scamming it isn’t breaking the comm
That plus what’s suggested in the op
Hard enforcement of once-a-day
For real no scammer will thrive that choked
With the users that were just banned, they deleted their previous posts so you couldnt tell how often they were making requests unless you personally kept track
I dont know a way to prevent that if we did implement a once a day policy that isnt just other people keeping track of who posts when