Loft Post

treebeard and the hobbits

TW: Human trafficking, SA, torture, discussion of scam farms

I see a whole bunch of people arguing that they would rather risk giving to a scammer than ignore someone's gofundme. I also see people saying things like "I can't believe some sick people are profiteering off genocide" and like, me neither, but I feel like you guys really don't understand who actually runs these kinds of scams and what they are.

Scams of noticeable scale-- like scam asks being sent from hundreds of accounts to every user on Tumblr!-- are typically related to organised crime in poor countries, not Susan from Milwaukee who wants a new coat and has no scruples. People get trafficked by gangs to scam farms in Asia and Africa where they're worked to the bone and tortured trying to get idiots in wealthy countries to part with their money. Genocide profiteering is pretty much the least evil thing these people do.

Here's a UN article on it. Obvious warnings for content related to human trafficking and SA.

When you donate to a scammer, you fund these organisations and give them a reason to exist. It's possible some of the fundraisers are legit. I honestly find it unlikely given I'm not seeing any from any other countries where urgent fundraisers would seem to have great reason to exist but which haven't captured the same level of attention on Tumblr-- the number of Sudanese, Congolese, Ukrainian, Burmese or Uyghur fundraisers in my DMs is a fat 0. In any case, there are safer ways to help.

If you want to help (which is great!) you don't have to take the risk of paying for human trafficking. Donate to legitimate charities which have the resources to safely and effectively ensure the money and help is getting to the right people. Funding human trafficking rings in Myanmar is not a good risk to be taking while trying to help.

And even if all these gofundmes were real, donating to a reputable organization does more good than donating to an individual.

Donating to a medical debt relief organization that buys off entire CDO's worth of medical debt from creditors at a fraction of the value is going to do far, far more good than giving the same amount of money to an individual trying to pay off a bill at full value plus interest.

Donating to a food kitchen that buys non-perishable foods in bulk at a fraction of the retail price is going to do far, far more good than spending the same amount buying one meal for a homeless person.

A random tumblr user is not qualified to "vet" fundraisers. If you do not personally know them, even if they are a popular blog or "well-known" they are equally capable of being a scammer, not knowing how to properly vet a fundraiser, being scammed themselves, etc. Even if you do personally know them, they can very easily be scammed.

Anyone that you do not follow or know, who randomly sends you a message asking for donations to a fundraiser is a scammer/bot. 100%, without doubt. This is a well known scam bot behavior on tumblr, and it has been here for ages. The old version of it would be "my sick cat". They just changed the message sent.

"I couldn't find the image after reverse searching it" is not in any way meaningful for vetting scams. There are a million ways to get unique photos/videos of children in bad circumstances, including paying very small amounts for them, or as explained by the link above, human trafficking.

People's accounts can and do also get hacked/stolen/etc and then used to link to fake scams. It's terrifyingly common.

Yes, it is gross as fuck for scammers to exploit horrific situations, it is also incredibly common. Fires, mass shootings, wars, etc. It happens for all of them.

GOFUNDME ONLY ALLOWS WITHDRAWALS FROM CERTAIN COUNTRIES, IF A PERSON DOES NOT HAVE A BANK ACCOUNT IN ONE OF THOSE COUNTRIES, THEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET FUNDS. ANYONE WHO IS ORGANIZING A FUNDRAISER OUTSIDE OF THOSE COUNTRIES IS EITHER A SCAMMER OR WILL HAVE TO REFUND DONATIONS.

You'll notice that Egypt, Gaza, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, etc are all not on this list. The majority of gofundmes I've seen, largely from people claiming to be one of those locations, are either scams or will be forcibly refunded since according to their own story they are not in a place where they could withdraw the money being sent.

We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the biodiversity in the neighborhood since. We have birds that we haven’t seen since we moved into the city from living rurally and those birds are starting to nest in the trees and gardens in spring. The swallows and bats are back at night. The single woodpecker we would only occasionally see visits daily and even has a friend that has joined it. We have more squirrels and rabbits and shockingly fewer moles and voles. We heard an owl outside last fall.

This is basic psychological and cognitive development theory. It's taught in pretty basic level Psych courses. This is known science.

Socializing with adults, of various ages, both related to you and not related to you, in various social situations from social equals to authority figure, is one of those vital landmarks. And it comes up over and over and over during development. As a young child you must interact with adults, who care for you, so you can understand care and safety. And it gets more deep and more complicated as you develop.

Preteens and teens must interact with people older than them, significantly older, in various ways, up to and including casual friendly socializing as equals, or they will not develop properly. This is absolutely vital. Your ability to function in the real world socially depends on it.

We are fucking destroying our young people with this bullshit.

Friends, I had not received a jury summons for this month. Which I told him, at which point his previously clear diction suddenly turned into a rapid mumble, only becoming clear for scary words like 'federal' and then asking to confirm my address, at which point I hung up and decided to call the police department later.

When I called the police department the desk officer sounded so tired y'all. All I had to say was "Hey I got a call earlier saying I missed jury duty this morning?" and she immediately sighed and told me that yes it was a scam that was going around and thanked me for calling to confirm.

So this is your periodic reminder that law enforcement agencies will not call you to tell you that you're in trouble. If you need to pay a fine of some sort they will mail you a physical invoice. Anyone calling you saying they're from the police or any other law enforcement organization (up to the CIA and yes I have heard of scammers attempting to impersonate CIA agents over the phone) who then tries to get financial information from you over the phone is a scammer.