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.
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.
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.