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.
@fediverse@lemmy.world
Yep.
I feel the fediverse should lean towards “overly aggressive” when combatting spam, before it takes root, even with all the negatives that brings.
I agree. E-mail is the original federated service. And 50 years later e-mail spam remains a big problem. I hope Fedi projects can get spam mitigations on-par with email before spammers start getting serious about this place.
Unfortunately, email solved the spam problem by becoming centralized AF. Now everything requires a “reputation”.
“Email solved the spam problem by becoming centralizing” yeah most of the spam I get is from gmail or has a reply-to header with gmail address
That’s just the spam that gets through! On my ancient ISP-provided email it’s primarily distributed via compromised accounts from the same provider. And what I see targeting the corporate world tends to come from newly setup email servers or newly setup accounts on paid email providers
I’d argue that telephones are the original federated service. There were fits and starts to getting the proprietary Bell/AT&T network to play nice with devices or lines not operated by them, but the initial system for long distance calling over the North American Numbering Plan made it possible for an AT&T customer to dial non-AT&T customers by the early 1950’s, and set the groundwork for the technical feasibility of the breakup of the AT&T/Bell monopoly.
We didn’t call it spam then, but unsolicited phone calls have always been a problem.
What we really need (and have always needed) is an update to the legal frameworks that classify what networks are and what protections are in place for users to ensure interoperability. The Internet has been the wild west for too bloody long, and the extractors and their monopolies need to be put away. That’s why they have been so happy to jump in with Donny Diaper at this point, because he’s letting them not only continue with impunity, but bring back company scrip.
That’s why I think the history of the U.S. phone system is so important. AT&T had to be dragged into interoperability by government regulation nearly every step of the way, but ended up needing to invent and publish the technical standards that made federation/interoperability possible, after government agencies started mandating them. The technical infeasibility of opening up a proprietary network has been overcome before, with much more complexity at the lower OSI layers, including defining new open standards regarding the physical layer of actual copper lines and switches.