Is it okay to beg for money on Mastodon?
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@aral Now, since we agree that identification is essentail to human aid, can we also agree that tag spamming is not a proper use of Mastodon?
Because when I see, say, an African account creating dozens of money request posts each day, tagging as many users as they can fit into each post, I feel they are using Mastodon in a way which is not helpful.
Like everyone else, I have a finite limit to how many people I can support, and this limit is not raised through spam.
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Mr. Randahl jerkwad. While you are so worried that people involved in humanitarian aid are "civil" to you and your ego, people are starving, getting killed, and being tortured in prison. You are awful.
And yes, I have a background in humanitarian aid, so I know of what I speak. You lack the sensitivity to understand suffering.
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@randahl Hey Randahl,
It’s 2026, not Dickensian England; we call it mutual aid, not begging.
If we’re talking about Gazans, they are currently facing genocide at the hands of Israel with the full support of countries like the USA, Germany, and the UK and the complicity of almost the entirety of the so-called civilised West. International organisations like the UN are deliberately being prevented from functioning by Israel and US.
If you want a list of people we’ve verified via video calls that you can help during this ongoing genocide by settler colonialists, please see:
https://gaza-verified.org/donate/
I would strongly urge you to take the context into consideration. Ask yourself what you would do if you couldn’t feed your family, if you couldn’t afford to treat your sick children, if the institutions that were supposed to be helping were shackled, and if you were actively being hounded off of every other online space by corporations complicit in the genocide being perpetrated against you.
If people are being forced to ask for help, it’s not their failing but the failing of the system that is forcing them to do so.
@aral
There is no shame in asking for money on social media. Lord knows, most of us are one setback away from penury. Giving money to people who need it is an necessary charitable act.But please don’t call it “mutual aid.” Mutual aid is mutual. Mutual aid is people working to take care of each other collectively. Mutual aid is building power and changing our circumstances together.
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@randahl Hey Randahl,
It’s 2026, not Dickensian England; we call it mutual aid, not begging.
If we’re talking about Gazans, they are currently facing genocide at the hands of Israel with the full support of countries like the USA, Germany, and the UK and the complicity of almost the entirety of the so-called civilised West. International organisations like the UN are deliberately being prevented from functioning by Israel and US.
If you want a list of people we’ve verified via video calls that you can help during this ongoing genocide by settler colonialists, please see:
https://gaza-verified.org/donate/
I would strongly urge you to take the context into consideration. Ask yourself what you would do if you couldn’t feed your family, if you couldn’t afford to treat your sick children, if the institutions that were supposed to be helping were shackled, and if you were actively being hounded off of every other online space by corporations complicit in the genocide being perpetrated against you.
If people are being forced to ask for help, it’s not their failing but the failing of the system that is forcing them to do so.
But please don’t call it “mutual aid.” Mutual aid is mutual. Mutual aid is people working to take care of each other collectively. Mutual aid is building power and changing our circumstances together.
Charity is transactional, not mutual. It is someone with power (money) giving to someone without and not otherwise changing anything.
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@Iveyline @randahl and how would a desperate and very poor person ‘verify’ themselves to a satisfactory standard?
I prefer to accept that very occasionally funds go to someone who I would not have given to were I aware of exactly who they are than risk being that privileged and hard hearted person who finds a reason not to help desperate people.
