- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Auction: https://www.sav.com/auctions/details/7073489/hexbear.net
Not sure what will happen, but seems to be a Fediverselore event for sure
Update: post from hexbear admin on chapo.chat: https://chapo.chat/post/4468531
what cowbee said, and you dorks trying to get the domain to redirect hexbear to sexually explicit or otherwise useless shit are just making it that much harder for the numerous palestinians, trans people, unhoused people, etc. who have come to rely on c/mutual_aid.
good to know that owning the “tankies” is more important to you dweebs than letting us continue to help them. i really hope you’re proud of yourselves.
I think anyone trying to buy the domain and redirect it as some kind of joke is dumb and I don’t support that.
But I’m curious how the vetting process works for c/mutual aid. How can you be sure that the money is going to people who actually need it, as opposed to people who are playing a part to garner your sympathy?
I’ve poked around hexbear from time to time and I remember a certain Palestinian family that was receiving fairly substantial aid. That appeared fairly legit to me, although it’s still extremely difficult to be sure.
But the people who need help with rent, or help paying their phone bill, or whatever random sob story they might come up with, I view with inherent suspicion.
Have you ever considered that it might be a much more efficient use of your resources to actually walk around wherever you live and give food and blankets directly to the unhoused? To volunteer at a local soup kitchen or homeless shelter?
Sending anonymous strangers money over the internet has a very large chance of going to the wrong people who are adept at manipulating others but not actually in the most need. It has a very large chance of funding self destructive behaviors of mentally ill people that ultimately drive the individual further into poverty and misery. Just something to think about.
The mutual_aid comm literally saved me from being homeless and losing my pet cats that I’ve had for 10 years.
Fuck you Nancy Grace. “Don’t give that homeless man money! He’ll use it on drugs”
What’s the worse problem? Someone getting something ‘they don’t deserve’ or someone not getting something they need to live?
That’s great, good for you.
I think drugs are great, but they can be very harmful for people who are already mentally unstable. I deal with homeless people frequently, and in many cases, abusing drugs is a major problem for them and giving them money just perpetuates a self destructive cycle that eventually ends with them dying before their time.
Someone not getting something they need to live is the worse problem, which is why sending your charity off into the interwebs with hopes and prayers that it has a positive impact is a very naive and lazy way of doing things. You should be making sure that it helps those who are most desperate, and the only way to ensure that is to do your giving IRL.
For your point on trust, hexbear users mostly just have to trust that the user is acting in good faith as there isn’t really any way to properly verify if the person is telling the truth without forcing them to reveal personal, and potentially identifiable, information. And for your point on funding destructive behaviours, if we assume that this individual is telling the truth about their situation, then you aren’t funding their drug addiction by helping them pay rent or buy food.
That’s fair and I respect it, we need to have the courage to trust other people and I’m sure people have received much needed aid from that community.
But at the same time we have to recognize when a system is vulnerable to abuse, and consider ways to prevent that abuse from happening, or at least limit it. Sometimes, people aren’t going to tell the truth, and sometimes they may not know how to help themselves. It’s very hard to recognize those scenarios when your only context is an anonymous username on an internet forum.
In that case, you simply just have to take the risk. A well-off person giving money to another well-off person pretending to be poor isn’t as harmful as a well-off person not giving money to a poor person because they think they are a well-off person pretending to be poor.
Giving money to a person pretending to be poor instead of a person who is actually poor is harmful. You only have a finite amount of money to give away and you would be wasting it.
Very interesting way of rationalizing it though. B+ for mental gymnastics.
It’s like giving money to the guy walking about the gas station with a story
You’ll see that same guy again and again, and he never seems to put any gasoline in his can