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 same reason a lot scam emails are riddled with typos, follow recognisable formats (eg nigerian prince) and can be easily determined as scams. If you can spot it, you aren’t the mark. It’s a form of selection bias. If you recognise Nicole you probably aren’t new to Lemmy or the Fediverse and are a bad mark. I’d guess, I never followed the links, don’t generally follow links dm’d from random, days old accounts in general. Maybe Nicole truly is just thirsty for Lemmy friends and keeps getting banned lmao.
Honestly people that do recognize it for what it is should respond. Keep them talking to waste their time so they can’t hurt someone else.
But then you’re also wasting your own time.
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.
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.
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.
