Hey there friendlies.

I haven't been very active on the sub lately. I've been immersed in more personal issues, and a bit more on the discord server (though I've been withdrawn from there a bit lately too) but as of today I'm going to work to being more active. We have had some basic modding done by the other mods, which I'm very thankful for though. I want to apologize for my inactivity, which I know hasn't been fair to the general community here.

I'm aware at this point that we've had a large amount of people asking for financial help. I want to make clear that we aren't against such things, however, there have been a lot of complaints of spammers and scammers. I messaged the other mods on the discord server so that we can figure out a solution for this, but as another user here on the subreddit suggested, I'm thinking we'll go with figuring out how to set up automoderator to auto-remove posts asking for financial aid. I'm not quite sure how to use automoderator, but I'm going to take the time to learn today.

Basically the idea will be that automoderator will auto remove financial aid request posts so that it ends up in our mod queue, with a message letting the poster know that posts will only be approved if the poster has other types of posting in general leftist subs. Anyone who has no other postings in the account info, or anyone who only posts for financial aid, or anyone who never posts in leftist subs, will have their post remain un-posted, and all others will have their post re-instated. There will be the ability for some people to appeal post-denials. (I'm aware that in some cases, some people might have a throw-away account due to stalking or harassment or other such reasons, but the poster will have to work with us mods to convince us of the reasoning.)

We don't want to have to resort to this, but unfortunately there have been people taking advantage of the general good-nature and kindness of the people in this community. Many of us aren't super well-off financially either though and we think it's appropriate to put in some protections for those we know are a part of the community.

I will make another announcement post once we have this system up and running, or if we run into blocks and need to re-work the issue. For now, please continue reporting posts you think are scams and us mods will work within the framework mentioned above to deal with it.

All that aside, I also want to announce that I'm going to be bringing back weekly check in threads. I haven't yet decided what day, but I think it's a really good idea that another user mentioned. I will let you all know once that's all worked out as well.

Let me know if you have any concerns.

Much love to you all. <3