Sorry, I Just saw your post about screenshots and I know it was form four days ago, but with regards to that do you have any advice for people that do need evidence? If discord screenshots can be so easily faked, what does someone do if they post an artist's beware or make a document about serial abusers?
Well, in a lot of cases, the answer is that this shouldn't be public information in the first place, other avenues should be used to address this issue. It's rare that a situation is actually improved by a call out, and public pressure is so easily abused that most of the time things just should not be handled in that way. In legitimate cases, a lot of it will always come down to trust.
Serial scammers are one of the few cases where there can be public good in letting the public be aware of the scam. In those cases, what will actually carry weight is the testimony of the people involved. Screenshots can be a tool to quickly show information, but as I said before, they equate to "dude, trust me." If the person posting the screenshots has no motive to lie and is someone known within a community to be a trustworthy person, then it is likely they will be taken at their word. Additional testimony from other people who were scammed/harassed/etc would also add proof that this scam is ongoing. Depending on the severity of the scam, filing a police report or a report with payment services used is a valid avenue of helping prevent people from being scammed as well. Contacting any platforms used to file a report against the user in question is also beneficial. If a police report is filed, that would be a matter of public records that other people could check against.
In cases of "serial abusers", in legitimate cases of abuse, there is often very little benefit to anyone involved for the matter to be handled via a public call out. If the case is a severe matter and involves someone with a significant platform (ex, someone with a lot of followers interacting with underage fans in an inappropriate manner), then straight up law enforcement needs to be involved. In any case where a crime has been committed, law enforcement should be involved before any attempts at public call outs are made. Information going public can make investigations difficult or impossible. In those cases, if law enforcement fails, the filings and evidence gathered will still usually be public records, and if there is legitimate need for proof of what took place, then that would be present. The platforms involved can also be contacted directly with evidence to push for removal if need be.
If you need records of something like discord conversations for a legal investigation, then you can take screenshots for your own memory (although those screenshots are only as valuable as your testimony). You can have a secondary source review the discord messages and create a record of them (a notary, a police officer, etc). You can also contact the platform in question and ask for a log of your conversation as legal evidence. Law enforcement are capable of getting warrants for that sort of information, often even if the information has been deleted. This can also provide additional information such as IP address, linked accounts, etc that can further establish who was sending those messages.
A lot of information will always come down to trust. If I give you any answer here along the lines of "ah, yes, this is the way that you can 100% prove something occurred" I guarantee you someone will have found a way to fake that information and use it to their own benefit.
Trust on the internet is a very dangerous game, and that's why call out posts in general are a terrible idea, because the vast majority of them are attempts to abuse that trust. Serious allegations of criminal behavior and attempts to harm others should not be addressed via a call out post, since there really isn't a way to prove what occurred and an abuser can make a post just as easily as someone who was abused can. In the case of serial scammers, legal action or platform action should ideally be involved, but failing that, it will still come back to trust based testimony.
