After discussing this with the people most often using the mutual aid community and feedback here we will be making a single change.

Meta posts will no longer be permitted in !mutual_aid@hexbear.net critical meta posts must not be about specific users and posted in !feedback@hexbear.net at risk of removal.

We will change the mutual aid sidebar to remove the clause permitting meta posts, we will also ask that users post once a day so that everyone’s post’s can be seen but this is not a hard rule as it is pretty clear that removing posts is a last resort in that community. This joins the other community recommendations that users include currency, how much is needed, updating when a user has received funds, or updating/locking the post when the need has been met.

This will be unfeatured in about 12 hours

~~Hello users of hexbear:

Due to recent meta posts in our mutual aid community we wanted to open up discussion about the community !mutual_aid@hexbear.net

We will never require explanation or justification from a user asking for aid in the community, and the mod and admin team continue to commit to not featuring an individual’s mutual aid request to prevent unfair exposure.

In addition, we will maintain a strict “No critical comments or meta comments” on a mutual aid post.

This post is to discuss the mutual aid community’s rule of allowing meta posts: mutual aid as a community, those making posts in it and those commenting on posts.

We are considering removing the exception allowing meta posts but wanted to involve the userbase before committing to a change.

Please comment with any thoughts, feelings, or suggestions regarding this change.

Thank you~~

    • egg1918 [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      18·
      27 days ago

      . I was facing homelessness and begged for cash on mutualaid and I watched as someone asked for money for a vehicle and received $4,000. Then they bought drugs with it.

      what the fuck. $4,000? WHAT THE FUCK THAT COULDVE DONE SO MUCH GOOD.

      Please tell me that at least that user was banned

    • Adkml [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      16·
      26 days ago

      Yea i normally wouldn’t have said anything if that exact person wasn’t the one complaining about other people dping that now.

    • allthetimesivedied [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      131·
      26 days ago

      I did not blow it all on drugs. Hell, I spent at least a quarter of that, in other words a whole entire rack, on other people in need. In other words, giving it away to my homeless friends. I sent one friend alone $400. I sent $200 to another.

      I’m not saying I didn’t buy drugs with it. But it was not even a quarter of that $4K.

      You know what I did blow it on? DoorDash. I spent maybe $1,000 on DoorDash.

      I’m ashamed of how I squandered that money either way and I’ve learned from my mistakes but I know nobody fucking cares so why the fuck should I bother.

    • Simon 𐕣he 🪨 Johnson@lemmy.mlEnglish
      10·
      27 days ago

      I think from the perspective of competing needs the more likely issue is that some people get more because they are more popular / appealing than others which is another form of market logic of its own. I think that’s a fair criticism, but it’s still a criticism of those who choose the allocation of resources rather than a criticism of those who need them.

      My point is that being the arbiter of competing needs on a person to person basis is morally fraught (and typically on some level dishonest) which is why real mutual aid is a communal and social function rather than a peer-to-peer market function. Also that enforcing a system of account on those who are in need is just opening up a can of worms for petty sectarian moralizing that is going to wind up with harming more people than preventing scenarios like this.

      There’s also just a lot of unverified, unknowable information to make a call here, and digging thru the post and user histories that started this thread it’s incredibly difficult to tell what the truth of the obvious off board drama between the involved users is.

      FWIW you shouldn’t have gone homeless, that’s a failing of society on multiple levels that should be eradicated.

        • Simon 𐕣he 🪨 Johnson@lemmy.mlEnglish
          7·
          27 days ago

          I’m not trying to call you out,

          I wasn’t taking it that way. I just think that your POV matters, but should be treated different than the POV of someone giving.

          I stopped begging for cash when I saw that the posters above and below me were victims of genocide.

          I think this is very noble of you.

          I’m absolutely against means testing of any kind, but I think that it is up to the poster to determine if some amount of a limited pool of resources should be allocated toward them, and failing that, it is up to the donator to determine if their donations are going to someone in dire need.

          Yeah I agree with this, the best we can do is caveat emptor.

          I just think that adjudicating it before/after the fact or debating whose rules are more moral is pointless and harmful. There’s already calls for the user to get banned, from people who likely only read scenario as presented by Adkml which is not productive. I think there are scenarios where the $4k/car/drugs thing could be extremely shitty sure, but I don’t have all the information to judge, I don’t want the user to provide it, and it’s not my place to judge to begin with.

          This is a message board, meaning it’s already a suboptimal way to distribute aid. At the end of the day this wasn’t someone pretending to be in need, they did get a car with the money, this person is still homeless. People should just live and let live.

    • T34_69 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      26 days ago

      That is disturbing to read, I’m sorry you went through that and I hope you’re at least okay now.

      I feel like there could be more emphasis on a hierarchy of needs in this comm but idk how to implement that without opening the cans of worms that come from basically means testing. That would go against the purpose of the comm. But maybe at least some feedback system that allows people who want to donate to understand whose requests are being ignored or whose requests still need to be fulfilled.