#A.) why me and not a vetter or dedicated account? I do NOT have the influence they do why am I considered a target

[fantasykiri5]

Yo a bunch of the asks in my inbox aren’t showing up on desktop??? It says I have 111 of them, and I CAN see them on mobile just fine. When I started answering the ones I already had an hour or so ago I could see the whole thing, and now when I get a new one I can see that one as it comes in, but none of the others in my inbox.

Has anyone ever encountered this issue? It’s very strange, idk why it’s happening and I kind of NEED to be able to access my asks. It’s way harder to properly answer all the Palestine GFM requests I’m getting from my phone (and more complicated to rb each one’s pinned, and add them to the master list doc I’m trying to make) AND I have a number of drawing request asks that I want to make sure I still have for when I actually get around to drawing the things requested.

Please help it’s really fucking weird

[oldmanontumbler]

@omgthatdress

OP, what are you talking about?

The vetting system is not "trust me, bro." The vetting system is Palestinian bloggers - who were open about their identity BEFORE October 7th - reaching out to these blogs and confirming that they're Palestinians in Gaza. Oftentimes, this is done in Arabic. Like, most vetters speak/read Arabic fluently. They can TELL when something is Google Translate mush.

Secondly, do you really think that the real life, actual Palestinians on this platform are just going to twiddle their thumbs and wait for their blogs to be found while their homes are being bombed? Of course not! Of COURSE they're sending DMs and inbox asks! Because getting donations on this platform is INCREDIBLY HARD. That's why you see so many donation posts prefaced with beautiful artwork, or with big, coloured text, or with photos that the person took.

Are there scam accounts out there? Of course. They have, as you mentioned, "word salad" URLs, and often mention either staying in a church after the bombing, or needing a Humalog injection. They ask for a small sum, like $300 or $1,200, disregarding that it takes up to $5,000 for a SINGLE PERSON to evacuate Gaza. This site has dedicated scam busters. @kyra45 is one of them. You can reverse search the images. You can search for the asker's blog name on Tumbler. You can see if any of the CAREFULLY VERIFIED bloggers have reblogged their post.

Palestinians are being wiped out. Systemically. Please don't spread this drivel. It allows Tumbler users to conveniently turn their backs on the actual human beings quite literally begging for their lives in their inboxes, and dismiss them as bots or scams.

Lastly, I am linking some resources for you to check if a campaign is vetted. Once I get on desktop, I'll link more.

@/gazavetters is a vetting blog

@/90-ghost is a Palestinian man and a major vetter

The Bees and Watermelons campaign

The spreadsheet set up by @/itsbitsams, @/nabulsi, and @/el-shab-hussein

Other good blogs to follow include @/stuckinapril, @/schoolhater, and @/a-shade-of-blue

And if all their enduring work isn't enough for you, the website GazaFunds is protected and hosts legitimate fundraisers.

Sooooo ummmmmmm this is something that's probably going to piss a lot of people off, but I feel like I really need to say it.

If you get a message from an account claiming to be a Palestinian fundraiser, it is a bot. It is a scam. You need to report & delete the message and encourage others to do the same.

I know because I get messages on this account DAILY. I have a very high follower count and I'm pretty active and I interact with my followers a lot, and apparently that all adds up to one big bot magnet.

Bots following and messaging this account was a MASSIVE problem before Tumblr fixed its new account policies. I used to spend literally hours blocking and reporting the hundreds of bots that I would get following me each day.

I learned a lot about bots and how to identify them. The easiest way is with no avatar, "untitled" in the blog description (BTW if your avatar is still set to default PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD change it because you run a substantial risk of being accidentally blocked & reported as a bot).

One of the dead give aways of a bot was what I call "word salad" names. Three seemingly random words strung together making no sense, always adjective, adjective or noun, noun. If you reported a lot of these bots, you'd notice the same words kept showing up.

Nowadays, I am bombarded with fundraiser requests and sometimes, they don't even bother to hide the fact that they're a bot. The avatar is default, the blog title is "untitled," and the blog name is a classic randomly-generated word salad.

However MOST of the requests I get come from at least semi-legit looking accounts. There are pictures, a name, a story. Never mind that I've gotten that message three times from different accounts.

Sometimes, they claim to be vetted, but the whole vetting system essentially adds up to "trust me bro." There is no way of guaranteeing that this account isn't just lying about being vetted, claiming to be vetted by a false person, or are using the identity of a real Palestinian to scam people.

Previously, I've seen a lot of people getting attacked for raising questions about these fundraisers and getting attacked for being racist or for harming Palestinian families in danger, like Tumblr isn't a website famous for its scams and the words "The Arkh Project" "All or Nothing" or "Miss Officer and Mr. Truffles" mean nothing to you.

I personally have been scammed by people claiming to be charities on Tumblr before, specifically, The Leelah Project which used the name of a trans teenager who died by suicide to swindle people out of their money.

Luckily, there are actual, respected charities out there you can give money to if you want to help the cause:

Palestinian Children's Relief Fund

Palestine Red Crescent Society

United Nations Relief Works Agency

Islamic Relief

World Central Kitchen

Médecins Sans Frontièrs

One of the hardest things to accept about the situation in Palestine is that realistically, there is very little that your average outsider can do to change it. However, these large, well-respected and trustworthy charities are out there doing the hard work to keep people alive, and should be where the donation money is going

These scam bots feed on people's naïvety and need to believe that they are making a difference, and even worse, feed on the fear that by ignoring them, it somehow makes you a racist doing direct harm to a refugee family, when in fact they are using the suffering of Palestinians to take away money from those in need.

As far as fundraisers that don't send out random asks for donations, I honestly don't know. You'll have to do the work yourself and approach with much caution.

Be careful out there.