this post was submitted on 22 May 2025

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UPDATED! Mutual_Aid discussion post (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

254 comments fedilink hide all child comments

After discussing this with the people most often using the mutual aid community and feedback here we will be making a single change.

Meta posts will no longer be permitted in [email protected] critical meta posts must not be about specific users and posted in [email protected] at risk of removal.

We will change the mutual aid sidebar to remove the clause permitting meta posts, we will also ask that users post once a day so that everyone's post's can be seen but this is not a hard rule as it is pretty clear that removing posts is a last resort in that community. This joins the other community recommendations that users include currency, how much is needed, updating when a user has received funds, or updating/locking the post when the need has been met.

This will be unfeatured in about 12 hours

~~Hello users of hexbear:

Due to recent meta posts in our mutual aid community we wanted to open up discussion about the community [email protected]

We will never require explanation or justification from a user asking for aid in the community, and the mod and admin team continue to commit to not featuring an individual's mutual aid request to prevent unfair exposure.

In addition, we will maintain a strict "No critical comments or meta comments" on a mutual aid post.

This post is to discuss the mutual aid community's rule of allowing meta posts: mutual aid as a community, those making posts in it and those commenting on posts.

We are considering removing the exception allowing meta posts but wanted to involve the userbase before committing to a change.

Please comment with any thoughts, feelings, or suggestions regarding this change.

Thank you~~

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Having accusations directly sent to the mod team shifts responsibility from the user wanting to donate to the moderator team, which at this point violates the spirit of the community in so far as we as a mod try not to influence individual fundraising efforts.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 days ago

So I have a question regarding that: there were some semi-regular posts in the MA Comm a few months ago, I won’t say which specifically, but they highly resembled certain scams I’ve seen online. At the time I kept mum, but I am curious if “I think this might be a scam” messages to the mods are treated differently than “This post has X, Y, and Z, which is documented at such-and-such as being associated with scammers” messages. Or if the mods are 100% agnostic on that front (no pun intended).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

right, then I've a mind that no accusations should be sent. i get people being upset, shit is dire. but while i understand, it just doesn't sit right. even if people are misrepresenting who they are i don't think they makes em less worthy, i don't get to judge why they're doin it. are they taking money outta months of the other people who need help? i don't think so. i don't think there's a set # of peeps putting out a set # of dollars. i donate to people when i can, that's the rule i use. i donate less lately cuz... well, take a look at my new name and guess...

if no one wants to vet worthiness and —to be clear— no one should be, then we're right back where we started: no posts attacking other users. those should be treated same as those smarmy judgin comments i see sometimes: straight to the effin modlog and a warning sent that reminds people of the spirit of this space

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

The scamming bit is also difficult to sus out due to the nature of the forum. Most people find taking donations to be demeaning and stressful, scammers are a minority. The only way a donator could assuage their concerns is by talking with the person that needs help about the situation, really.

If only we didnt have capitalism, itd be much easier for the state to help people.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Trying to determine who is scamming would also mean defining what constitutes a scam or not. Which for certain obvious definitions like okay sure but trying to draw a distinction where it's less clear is just means testing. Trying to clearly define a line of who is allowed to ask for help and who isn't is neoliberalism of the highest order

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

Personally, I look at post histories and whether or not they engage in the community at large or if it's all just mutual aid posts. I know that's not necessarily fair maybe but it's how I feel. The mutual aspect implies they do what they can to help others or engage in the community with meaningful posts and discussions.

It's not a pass/fail thing, it just feels like a window into the type of person asking for help and what they are likely to spend the money on.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Everyone trying to help out should set their own personal limits. For example, I spend my allotment of donation money on our trans homeless housing projects so I can't give much money here. I am able to help people get housing directly from here, and I have done that a couple of times, so I do try to keep an eye on things.

And yeah, means testing as a policy is terrible. Imagine needing help, dealing with the stress of needing to take donations, and just getting shunted to an off-channel because you weren't deemed worthy. So many charity operations work on this premise, I've experienced it myself when I was younger and needed help. Setting your own limits makes it your problem, not an organizational problem, and not a problem for the person asking for help. I also doubt the usefulness of means testing in a charity, I think scammers can be very conniving and all you're doing is hurting normal people by becoming too restrictive.

Scammers of course try to ruin it for everyone. In my real world experience dealing with charities and homeless issues, we've even seen certain people violently silence others that need help in order to cut in front of lines by flashing guns or knives. These are all issues relating to the scarcity of help, unfortunately, and they cannot be realistically solved in the current system.

Housing centric aid imo is the most important and direct form of aid, in my time helping people out irl, I've seen so much money go straight to a landlord's pocket when many of the donors had extra rooms to directly house someone and for much cheaper. Some of these donors have literally never had it cross their mind that they should help house homeless people directly, such is the state of mutual aid related education in this country. Scammers are also few and far between, scammers are selfish and are very unlikely to accept housing in a group-living situation, so it is a self-filtering process. Landlords are genuinely the most evil people in society, imagine encouraging someone with cancer to do a gofundme so they can directly pay you cash at a price that isn't even the base cost of operation for the apartment! I have seen this happen, and people applauded the landlord for not kicking the person with cancer out!

At this point I'm just rambling and going off topic, I've been wanting to do a writeup about housing aid networks for a long time but I've been very busy lately.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago

Basically all of this yes

[–] [email protected] 61 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I feel like the current status quo of the comm is just demoralizing for all involved and I’m not really sure what could be done.

I can’t really speak for anyone seeking assistance, but as an outside observer it feels like people aren’t receiving as much help as they’d like or potentially could and I imagine it’s tiring having to make multiple posts a day with potentially little to show for it.

On the other end of things I think comrades looking to lend a hand can find it hard to know how best to do that. It’s hard to know sometimes who has already been helped and who is falling through the cracks. So I think it can be overwhelming for potential donators and unfortunately discourages people from doing so.

I can’t speak to the administrative or moderation side of things or what would be feasible, but I have some interest in trying to make the comm more effective for everyone involved.
Hopefully other people share their input in ways they think things could be improved.

Idk if that’s the point of this thread or it’s just about meta stuff or whatever…

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 days ago

It's really the main issue with the internet, lack of transparency. Anyone can easily make multiple accounts and also there's no way to verify anything about any of it really. At least when I do direct aid locally I can tell that the person is in a bad way pretty quickly. No one on the streets here is faking it and it's just not the case on the internet. I'd love to direct my resources to leftists where possible but I haven't got a lot to spare so I'm probably going to focus on local direct aid.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 days ago

What specific changes would you make?

We already ask that posters include if they have had their request met to help communicate who has been helped already.

Having moderators decide who is or isn't a scammer shifts responsibility from the user wanting to donate to the moderator team which at this point violates the spirit of the community in so far as we as a mod try not to influence individual fundraising efforts.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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 🤷

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I don't think those desperate to have basic needs met is on the same level as having to scroll past posts if this is supposedly a space inhabited by leftists that care about marginalized people. As someone who's experienced homelessness I can understand not wanting to get to that point because it becomes exponentially harder to leave it once you're there.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (56 children)

Yeah. When I post multiple times a day, it’s because I really need help and nobody is…helping me.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 days ago

Is that an abuse? or just a consequence of the format making it so posts get easily drowned out?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

We could community feature (pin/sticky) a meta discussion post in the mutual aid community and seems to be a good compromise between what the current rule is and what the proposed change is

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