My initial instinct was to read it the first way, and a look into their posting history confirms this, I think.
Sphere
joined 4 years ago
House foreclosure is coming within the next few days. Need $570 to stave it off. Please help. 20/570
Bump
hexagonal family crest with a bear on it
Wow, some seriously deep lore there
do you think there should be a weekly limit on amount requested?
No, users' needs will often vary; limits like this will cause problems.
do you think there should be a weekly limit on amount of posts?
This may make sense, but the Active sort definitely incentivizes posts every 6 to 8 hours instead, and I don't see an easy way around that, unfortunately. I defer to others' opinions on this one.
do you think mods should keep track of amounts received via user reports after donating?
On the one hand this sounds like a decent system; on the other hand the potential for abuse does exist. But if people want to try it out, and mods are okay with doing their part, I'd be willing to participate.
do you think we change the name from mutual_aid to emergency aid?
Not really, it kinda seems pedantic to me.
do you think we should allow meta posts?
Yes; otherwise there is no way to criticize bad actors, and I am of the opinion that the recent meta post, which I believe prompted this one, was valuable and helpful to the community.
Look elsewhere in this thread; BaileyDee's behavior has been scammy in a variety of ways (the supposed hypoglycemia, it seems to me, is a way to create false urgency and get people not to consider things before sending money).
I have a friend who is a medical doctor, who does not believe this person's story--simply going to a hospital would be enough to take care of the issue for weeks, he said, because the hospital would be legally obligated to patch them up (unless they're diabetic, which you'll note that they have never once claimed to be). Failing that, walking into any fast-food restaurant and taking some ketchup packets would do the trick.
It has been bothering me greatly for some time to see what seems like a fairly obvious scam hoodwink numerous goodhearted people here, and I am grateful that someone finally had the guts to point it out (I have been trying to convince my doctor friend to make a throwaway account on here to address the claims made more thoroughly, but he's been too busy to do so).
Coughy*
Leaving aside the total amorality of this, these people have absolutely no grounds to sue. They bought a house and the value went down. That's how the cookie crumbles sometimes
the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
This Dave person has been on quite the adventure lately...
https://hexbear.net/post/4858070
Edit: they seem to have deleted their account. So maybe more of a misadventure
Edit 2: Aw man, misdaventure was right there!
Due to the particulars of the Active sort algorithm, bumping stops being very effective sometime before 12 hours after the post is made, which a bot would not counteract.
That said, I have long been planning to put together a basic bumper-bot that would, upon being triggered in a thread, reply every 10 to 30 mins (not sure what the optimal frequency is) to keep the thread bumped for a certain amount of time (also not entirely sure on this number, but overall duration would be at least a few hours).
This doesn't keep threads around longer than they can last now, but will be more consistent than human bumpers, and will allow mods to ban the other bots from the comm, since their instant replies don't really affect the ranking at all (it's based on the timestamp of the most recent comment, nothing else).