Like, it can’t be a real person, right? Has anyone tried following the links? I’m curious how they’re scamming people. It just seems like anyone getting the same message 5 times won’t fall for being catfished, so I don’t understand what their strategy is.
The strategy is to get you onto a different platform to make instant messaging easier. They are just “advertising” on Lemmy.
Once you’re on a chat platform, they will likely attempt the “Romance Baiting” (formerly “Pig Butchering”) scam: make the target fall in love, then persuade them to send money for things like “travel expenses” or “family medical bills”. Also involves buying crypto.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_butchering_scam
There is an effort to reterm away from the dehumanizing and victim blaming “Pig Butchering” to “Romance Baiting”.
I’ve updated the post to reflect this.
Easier and/or less moderated. They would be much more difficult for a moderator to track down if you’re talking with them on another platform.
A good guess but so far as i can tell they dont actually message people directly outside of the initial contact. The chat rooms are barely active but ive been idling on the matrix for days and nothing.
This makes the most sense, but I still find it odd that they would send victims to the same discord server, or friendica.
Is it always the same discord server? I got the message the other day but ignored it.