#GazaVerified campaigns tracker status

Most of the campaigns at https://gaza.onl/campaigns/accounts are unfortunately stuck at $0.

This is because of two distinct issues:

• Chuffed: they have become more aggressive at allowing requests only from real browsers. For a while I could get around their limitations by using a pool of proxies for the scrapers’ requests. Now they are simply issuing JS Cloudflare challenges to clients to prevent scraping. This is unfortunately quite tricky for me to solve without adding invasive solutions like FlareSolverr to resolve the Cloudflare challenges (and even in that case mileage may vary a lot). If anyone has contacts at Chuffed, the best thing to do is to forward them to me. I can explain what we’re doing and why we need to do that, and hopefully they can whitelist the archive’s IP.

• GoFundMe: at least since today short-format GoFundMe URLs (https://gofund.me/{id}) are mostly broken - the gofund.me Web server is either timing out or returning HTTP 502. I have implemented a workaround on the archive (namely, it caches the resolved full URLs from GoFundMe so we won’t have to hit that brittle URL-shortener again), but it will only work once gofund.me is operational again and the archive can start caching resolved URLs on the db.

Until these issues are fixed (and they’re both addressed upstream, rather than with more hacks from my side), I’m afraid that most of the campaigns will remain at $0.

cc @aral @casey @gazaverified

#GazaVerified campaigns tracker status

Most of the campaigns at https://gaza.onl/campaigns/accounts are unfortunately stuck at $0.

This is because of two distinct issues:

• Chuffed: they have become more aggressive at allowing requests only from real browsers. For a while I could get around their limitations by using a pool of proxies for the scrapers’ requests. Now they are simply issuing JS Cloudflare challenges to clients to prevent scraping. This is unfortunately quite tricky for me to solve without adding invasive solutions like FlareSolverr to resolve the Cloudflare challenges (and even in that case mileage may vary a lot). If anyone has contacts at Chuffed, the best thing to do is to forward them to me. I can explain what we’re doing and why we need to do that, and hopefully they can whitelist the archive’s IP.

• GoFundMe: at least since today short-format GoFundMe URLs (https://gofund.me/{id}) are mostly broken - the gofund.me Web server is either timing out or returning HTTP 502. I have implemented a workaround on the archive (namely, it caches the resolved full URLs from GoFundMe so we won’t have to hit that brittle URL-shortener again), but it will only work once gofund.me is operational again and the archive can start caching resolved URLs on the db.

Until these issues are fixed (and they’re both addressed upstream, rather than with more hacks from my side), I’m afraid that most of the campaigns will remain at $0.

cc @aral @casey @gazaverified

Who knew the war between Ukraine and Russia would be my saving grace?

I honestly did not see that coming. It certainly was not on my "bingo card."

I would like to thank the Ukrainian government for bombing Russia's digital infrastructure, and I have made a donation to Ukraine.

This is their government website. Please make donations directly to their government, and let us not repeat the previous mistakes of anonymous users claiming to be "verified."

https://u24.gov.ua/sky-defense

#Ukraine #Russia #GazaVerified #IsraelVerified #Spam #Scam #UkraineWar #Bots

If you missed it.

As you may know, for over a year now, I have been trying to warn people that Gaza "Verified" is a scam group.

Imagine this — you're new. You just made your first post. No one knows you. You didn't use any hashtags, so no one can easily find you either, since you follow no one and no one follows you.

But ironically, these same people like and boost the first post of everyone who creates a new account claiming to be from Gaza "Verified". They claim to support Ukraine, but wouldn't you know it, they're offline right now while Russia is having problems.

#GazaVerified #IsraelVerified #Spam #Scam #Fraud #MutualAidRequest #MutualAid #Russia #Bots #Ukraine #UkraineWar