\n<\/p>\n
Hanin Al-Batsh estimates she has signed up for more than 80 Bluesky accounts in the last six months.<\/p>\n
Like hundreds of other Palestinians struggling to buy or even find food in Gaza, Al-Batsh uses Bluesky to promote her crowdfunding campaigns, hoping to raise enough money for flour and milk for her children in a given week.<\/p>\n
Her posts on the text-based social network have grown increasingly desperate as Israel tightens its grip of the Gaza Strip, forcing millions into starvation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello friends, my children have become weak, have lost weight, are malnourished, and have very low iron levels,\u201d Al-Batsh\u2019s latest post reads.<\/p>\n
Images the young mother shared with the Guardian show her two sons, one-and-a-half-year-old Ahmed and three-year-old Adam, sprawled out on a makeshift bed on the floor of the warehouse where they are sheltering.<\/p>\n
As hunger is spreading rapidly through Gaza, and aid remains inaccessible to many, Palestinians are turning to crowdsourcing campaigns hosted on sites like GoFundMe and Chuffled as a lifeline.<\/p>\n
But as they seek to get the word about their campaigns out in the world via social media, their accounts are frequently shut down or marked as spam. That\u2019s especially the case on Bluesky, the young Twitter alternative popular in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Bluesky has deactivated nearly all of Al-Batsh\u2019s accounts after just a few days, she said. The longest she has been able to hold on to one is 12 days.<\/p>\n
When the social network marks one account as spam, she creates another one, hoping to reassure potential donors that she is not a bot.<\/p>\n
<\/span>A view of northern Gaza from a Jordanian aid plane on 5 August 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Alessio Mamo\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The shutdowns, therefore, ironically force her to resort to exactly the behavior that Bluesky, in its effort to combat bots and scams, is seeking to root out: batch following and then repeatedly tagging the same people who engaged with their previous accounts.<\/p>\n Al-Batsh no longer tags people in every post after a stern email from Bluesky, hoping to abide by the platform\u2019s rules. \u201cBut now no one can find my posts,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In other words, in an act of desperation, these Palestinians often do operate like bots. With every fresh account, it becomes harder for people like Al-Batsh to shake the accusation. Low follower counts and posts that repeatedly tag others en masse are often tell-tale signs of a bot.<\/p>\n Recently, though, a grassroots answer to the problem has emerged. Since May, new Bluesky accounts Al-Batsh has made have something new: all her posts end with a green checkmark emoji and the phrase: \u201cVerified by Molly Shah,\u201d a reference to a Germany-based lawyer-turned-activist who has been independently verifying Gaza crowdfunding campaigns. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n There are a handful of other volunteers doing the same work on Bluesky. And similar efforts exist on other social media platforms. Some are even run by entire teams of volunteers: there\u2019s GazaFunds and Radio Watermelon on X and Instagram, and Gaza Vetters on Tumblr.<\/p>\n Still, Shah said, she wished there was a better system in place. \u201cThis centers me too much,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Shah has been on Bluesky since the early days of the relatively young platform\u2019s life, when she had only about 7,000 followers and knew of only one person from Gaza with a Bluesky account, Jamal.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how her verification project started: she had encouraged Jamal, a friend of a friend, to open a Bluesky account and shared his posts on her own profile, hoping to bring attention to his crowdfunding campaign in 2023. It worked. Jamal raised enough money to leave Gaza.<\/p>\n <\/span>Palestinians flock to the Zikim crossing to acquire limited flour and basic food aid as the famine worsens with the ongoing Israeli blockade in North Gaza, on 7 August 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Mahmoud Issa\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n Shah\u2019s verification project snowballed as more people in Gaza joined the social network. Many reached out to her, hoping she\u2019d share their campaigns with her now 57,000 followers. She began asking for information about the individuals or families in the campaigns before sharing them, and that\u2019s how her guerrilla authentication network got its start.<\/p>\n Today, Shah has a spreadsheet of more than 300 accounts she\u2019s vetted and verified. They use the same badge of authentication as Al-Batsh, \u201cverified by Molly Shah\u201d, in their posts and profile pages. The stamp doesn\u2019t always prevent a Bluesky account from being flagged as spam by the company\u2019s systems, but her hope is that it will help other people on Bluesky confirm that the person behind the account is genuine.<\/p>\n \u201cThe verification seems to help people recognize that they\u2019re real people,\u201d Shah said. \u201cI just want people to get to know Palestinians. To me, I don\u2019t think of it as fundraising as the main goal, though I\u2019m happy to help them do that. I think of it as [combatting] the persistent and insistent dehumanization of Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n The vetting process isn\u2019t standard, Shah said, and can include doing a video call, having someone Shah has already vetted or knows personally to vouch or viewing documentation that proves their identity and shows that they\u2019re still in Gaza. All of this takes time. Al-Batsh said she waited two months before she heard back from Shah. Occasionally, Shah will come across a person pretending to be in Gaza or misrepresenting their situation in other ways. For the most part, the people who reach out to her are in fact real people in Gaza in need of help.<\/p>\n Gaza has reached catastrophic levels of famine, according to aid and human rights organizations, which raises the stakes of each fundraising campaign and even each post on Bluesky. Duaa Al-Madhoun, another mother in Gaza trying to feed her three children, said she, too, has had dozens of her Bluesky accounts deleted. Buying flour, milk and diapers cost her $100 a day when those items are available. Lately, diapers and milk have been harder to find, she said, and she\u2019ll go some days without eating so that she can feed her children.<\/p>\n \u201cMy child wears nylon bags, no diapers. He suffers from diaper rash,\u201d Al-Madhoun said. \u201cFood is scarce and very expensive. If food is available, I just eat some rice.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The impact of a fundraiser can be near immediate, according to Nat Calhoun, who aids several families in Gaza with their campaigns. In one case, Calhoun said, a family they are in touch with in Mawasi, Khan Younis, reached out to them about an older woman in their town who had not eaten for several days. They were able to raise $110 to buy her flour and transferred the money to her the next day.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can be instantaneous,\u201d Calhoun said. \u201cI don\u2019t think people realize that your help can make an impact in a day.\u201d<\/p>\n To receive the money collected through fundraisers, Palestinians need to work with a \u201creceiver\u201d, someone outside of Gaza who sets up the campaign and collects the money on their behalf and wires the money through their banks. That\u2019s because the platforms use payment processors that do not operate in Gaza.<\/p>\n The system has meant that Palestinians have been required to place a great deal of trust in these middle actors, who are people they\u2019ve never met.<\/p>\n It also means the campaigns, and the Palestinians relying on them, are vulnerable to scams.<\/p>\n <\/span>Amira Muteir holds the hand of her five-month-old baby Ammar, whom she says is wasting away from malnutrition, in Gaza City, on 5 August 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Mahmoud Issa\/Reuters<\/p>\n Calhoun and Shah say many of the scams they do see exploit and victimize Palestinians.<\/p>\n Al-Batsh\u2019s first campaign was hosted on GoFundMe by a woman who listed her location as Tucson, Arizona. The campaign raised nearly $37,000. Al-Batsh received about $34,000 before the campaign host told Al-Batsh that she had trouble logging into the campaign. \u201cI never received the rest of the money,\u201d Al-Batsh said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt breaks my brain to think about,\u201d Calhoun said. \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating because the people in Gaza can\u2019t make their own fundraisers. They\u2019re at the whims of somebody else and they have to trust somebody to do good by them.\u201d<\/p>\n A spam label on Bluesky is enough to deter donations. Ad hoc verification systems like Shah\u2019s provide some level of guarantee that the money people are donating will actually help someone in Gaza rather than a bot farm or scammer.<\/p>\n When Shah shares a campaign, it makes a difference. Al-Batsh\u2019s campaign has received 10 donations ranging from $5 to $505 in the two days since Shah shared her post. Before that, she was averaging two to three donations a day, if that.<\/p>\n Though her verification network has helped some Palestinians maintain their online lifelines, Shah says it\u2019s not a sustainable system. She is overwhelmed with requests and had to decide to share only one account a day.<\/p>\n In the meantime, thousands of Bluesky users have signed open letters and made public pleas asking the company to improve its moderation practices.<\/p>\n \u201cWe understand that some Gazans post in a way that may trigger some of Bluesky\u2019s internal automated spam rules when posting fundraising links,\u201d one of the open letters, with 7,000 signatures, reads. \u201cHowever, treating a group of extremely vulnerable people the same way that the platform treats t-shirt bots and phishers is not only incredibly cruel, it has also exacerbated the situation of desperate people just attempting to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Israeli activists in Tel Aviv protest against Israel\u2019s bombing, starving and displacement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.<\/span> Photograph: Ariel Schalit\/AP<\/p>\n Bluesky said in response to the open letter that the company was \u201ccommitted to ensuring\u201d people in Gaza \u201ccan be heard\u201d on the platform. However, it continued, some of the behaviors of these accounts violated community guidelines, and it encouraged users to \u201cfocus their efforts through authentic accounts\u201d.<\/p>\n Bluesky did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t get every moderation decision right, which is why we maintain an appeals process,\u201d the post continued. Shah and others connected with people in Gaza say few people get a response from the company when they file an appeal. It remains difficult for Palestinians to maintain their accounts for more than a few days.<\/p>\n Bluesky had an opportunity to improve its moderation system in the early days of the war in Gaza, when there were fewer people on the platform, Shah said. She wishes they had taken it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sounds like Bluesky is saying: \u2018We\u2019re getting rid of spammers,\u2019 but really what they\u2019re getting rid of are people who are desperate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hanin Al-Batsh estimates she has signed up for more than 80 Bluesky accounts in the last six months. Like hundreds of other Palestinians struggling to buy or even find food in Gaza, Al-Batsh uses Bluesky to promote her crowdfunding campaigns, hoping to raise enough money for flour and milk for her children in a given<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[7322,6525,8311,3371,205,2786,204,8312,722],"class_list":{"0":"post-14702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-accounts","9":"tag-desperate","10":"tag-flagged","11":"tag-funds","12":"tag-media","13":"tag-palestinians","14":"tag-social","15":"tag-spam","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A guerrilla verification network<\/h2>\n
Stopping devastating scams<\/h2>\n
Requesting changes from Bluesky<\/h2>\n