I never feel comfortable sharing a video of myself while I’m suffering.
But because some people claimed my account is fake, I had no choice but to record this video.
I hate how this world treats us. Like we always need to prove our pain, as if it’s normal to doubt someone’s reality without asking for any details or evidence.
Please share the post
(( Kindly find some clarification in the comments ))
If you would like to help my family, kindly check the bio 🇵🇸
#gaza #palestine
@NouranKhaledGh@mastodon.social I feel like I should probably give my 2 cents here.
I unveiled at least a dozen scam accounts in the previous days pretending to be people from Gaza.
I have been trained to spot online fraud, I contributed to KYC systems for payments systems (including the one that GoFundMe used to piggyback on) and trained AI models to detect fraudsters on ecommerce platforms.
I can’t share what I look at (it’d be like an investigator openly telling what details they look on a crime scene), but I can tell you that the cases I unveiled in the past days weren’t that sophisticated, and they included a lot of “rookie mistakes” that I could easily spot after talking to those actors for a few minutes.
In your case though what you post is extremely credible. IMHO your “mistake” was probably to share generic material also shared by other contacts in the beginning (this is a technique usually leveraged by scammers and of course it triggers alarm bells in many of us). But I feel quite confident that everything you posted in the past days is genuine. It’s nothing that I could find online even with reverse searches, nor the things that could easily be generated even by the most sophisticated AI models.
It’s my rule to never trust 100% someone online unless I’ve also met them in person, but I believe that your case is actually very strong - and, if your profile is actually a scam (something that I believe to be extremely unlikely at this point), it’d be one of the most sophisticated scams I’ve ever seen (something extremely unlikely given the level and budget used by all the scam campaigns I’ve seen in these days).
I hate how this world treats us
I agree that it’s awful to feel mistrusted when you fight for your own life and you desperately cry for help.
But try to walk in the shoes of us instance admins/mods too.
It’s been one awful dilemma after another in these days.
If we trusted blindly everyone who posted a fundraised link and some content from Gaza, we would have been legally responsible for advertising authentic scams on our platforms - and funnel money to criminals instead of those in Gaza. If instead we doubted everyone, we would have probably risked shutting down authentic cries for help from Gaza too (something that at least I would have never forgiven myself). It was our duty to make sure that, given the limited information we had access to, we made as many right calls as possible so aid could actually go to those who needed it.
Our problem is also that platforms like Chuffed are really bad at running their own KYC before someone opens a page there, links a bank account and asks for money.
(GoFundMe is also quite bad, but at least they have their own payment processor, my previous employer, to cover their ass on the KYC side).
Not only, but despite reporting some of those scam campaigns in the past days (and other people doing the same) some of them are still online. And raised more than $45k by now.
So it’s literally like the burden of verification ends up falling entirely on social media admins and mods - and most of us were never trained to run these checks.
I totally understand that this is definitely disheartening if looked from your perspective though - it’s not your fault if criminals try to blend in and get some money from the suffering of other people.
And I totally agree that people shouldn’t block nor mistrust without asking for extra evidence.
Btw, not sure if you’ve had any videocalls with any sufficiently “visible” account on this platform, but I know of other accounts who have had brief calls with e.g. Aral. Having an account with >40k followers confirming your identity on a live call is probably the quickest way to achieve trust.
Anyway, I think that the evidence you have provided by now is already strong and compelling, but a videocall (if you feel comfortable) would definitely remove any reason to doubt you.
As a sign of my trust, I have just sent another donation. I think it’s the 2nd or 3rd time, but I will keep donating to any accounts that I feel confident enough to be genuine, because I know that people need food and basic necessities to be covered every day.
And if you know any families in Gaza going through this extremely difficult situation please put them in contact with me, Aral or other instance admins (e.g. I know that the folks at kolektiva.social were also quite active on these issues). Once verified their identities we’ll be more than happy to get aid delivered to them too. I feel like it’s our civic duty to help as many people as possible during this tragic events.
Nouran 🍉
