Please read this.
There have been some (unsubstantiated) accusations that @NouranKhaledGh@mastodon.social were a fake account. Even though she uploaded multiple videos of herself. Which, regarding those accusers, just lead to them accusing her of being "AI-generated".
Nouran is not fake. There are many scammers, unfortunately—that is true and very sad—but she is not one of them. She is a human being, suffering from one of the worst atrocities and crimes in human history. If you have any humanity in you, please don't discount her, and others in the same situation as her (like @Aseelsehwel@mas.to).
@fabio@manganiello.social, @aral@mastodon.ar.al, and many others are doing incredibly valueable, life-saving work. They are heroes of our time. Please follow them if you have any seed of morals in you.
And do what is in your power to help the suffering victims of this genocide.
At the very least, don't just block an account straight away if it looks a bit fishy. At the very least, talk to them, ask for clarification. Imagine it were you trying to survive, and everyone would just block you.
@mutualaid@a.gup.pe
#genocide #palestine #gaza
https://manganiello.social/objects/22c60d76-3d61-488c-a0a1-ed1b3722ee29
@davidculley@hachyderm.io @NouranKhaledGh@mastodon.social @Aseelsehwel@mas.to @fabio@manganiello.social @aral@mastodon.ar.al @mutualaid@a.gup.pe Thanks for sharing, I got 2 follow requests, no sense of why that account would follow, and it was fishy, especially as it was at a time that a public figure also had requested. That may be "unfair" but having dealt with scammers, I can tell you what you can tell, is how much effort a person is willing to put in, not whether they are scammers.
There's no judgement either way here. But I think the idea of trying to claim, "this person is not a scammer" is very tricky business.
Mind you... The claim regarding KYC, is highly suspect to me, as I know many people who've been hit very hard by "Experts" around KYC... So Yeah... I don't buy that (that could be a personal issue on my part, but not having had access to a bank account for over a year because an expert in KYC says that you (as it's defined in law) is a scammer, or dealing with terrorists, doesn't really make me trust such people).
@JigmeDatse@social.openpsychology.net @mutualaid@a.gup.pe @aral@mastodon.ar.al @davidculley@hachyderm.io @Aseelsehwel@mas.to @NouranKhaledGh@mastodon.social to be clear, I never said that I ran formal KYC around these accounts. That would involve access to bank accounts or IDs, run them through WorldCheck, Onfido etc., and given the situation this is just not doable (at least not by private citizens, and not in a situation of extreme war like this where a lot of this information may either be hard to get by or very insensitive to ask).
It should be the job of the platforms that run these fundraisers to run them though, and I can tell you that the fact that they don't often do it properly isn't that surprising.
We can never be 100% sure without running those checks, but we can be reasonably confident by investigating through other ways (EXIF headers of direct shared media, videocalls, reverse image/video search, IP addresses left on our systems if they click on the links we provide them...).
Plus, we're talking of someone in this case who posted videos from that terrace:
1. Showing her phone with her Mastodon account opened to prove that she's the same person
2. Showing herself standing there and talking into the camera
And she's also open to have a videocall to confirm that it's her.
Of course 100% trust doesn't exist when it comes to someone who you've never met offline, but we're close enough to the "extremely unlikely to falsify" case here IMHO.
Other scam accounts that I investigated repeatedly refused to have their identity checked, which is exactly the opposite of what I'm seeing here.
About the "mass follow" - what would you expect from people who are literally dying from starvation who come to a platform that they don't even know how it works and ask for help? Of course they want to maximize reach. I can't see that by itself as a sign of scam.
Eventually think by yourself "which signals would I like to see to trust these people?", knowing that probably you won't have the means of running a proper KYC, and that any level of confidence will necessarily be probabilistic - but weigh that confidence against the risk of not giving aid to people who are literally dying in a genocide if your hypothesis is wrong.
I think it's a quite thorny issue, but we can probably all (as Fediverse) come up with a set of best practices to judge these cases.
The biggest issue I see here is that, when someone cries "scam!" publicly without running even basic checks first, just on the basis of their instinct, they may end up doing a REALLY big damage. Because others who were willing to help will probably also become suspicious. And if the accounts are actually genuine that really makes the difference between life and death.
@fabio@manganiello.social @mutualaid@a.gup.pe @aral@mastodon.ar.al @davidculley@hachyderm.io @Aseelsehwel@mas.to @NouranKhaledGh@mastodon.social Thank you for confirming that you are happy to be scammed, and feel others should be as well. I don't really mind that. As best I can see your "evidence" is barely above what scammers do provide when they are more committed to the scam.
I don't mind one bit. Your response makes it clear that you'd rather people blindly accept "your" sense of "this is good, go for it," than actually express their concerns.
Something about goose and gander... Not sure what it is though. Maybe you can figure it out.
@JigmeDatse@social.openpsychology.net @mutualaid@a.gup.pe @aral@mastodon.ar.al @davidculley@hachyderm.io @Aseelsehwel@mas.to @NouranKhaledGh@mastodon.social look, this is not your normal KYC use-case.
This is not a Western business in a country not at war that tries to get electronic payments, where you would usually check the bank account, cross check WorldCheck lists, ask for a selfie next to a driver’s license, cross check Onfido records, check source IPs etc.
This is a scenario of large scale genocide where a lot of private property has been destroyed, where those on the ground regularly use VPNs to bypass the checks put on them by a hostile government, and where bank accounts that receive foreign payments get easily blocked.
So it’s normal that the person that collects the money isn’t the same one that receives it, or the IP addresses are from another country, or that traditional IDs may be hard to get by.
So my question is: how do we bootstrap trust in such extreme conditions?
I’ve come up with a couple of rules of thumb, and decided that it’s ok to take a little more risk if given enough evidence that makes fraud unlikely. The alternative is not to give any help to someone who may actually need it and contribute to their death. So how much appetite for risk are we willing to take? And if the things we’re asking to verify identity aren’t sufficient what framework would you propose?
David Culley
