This is probably obvious to anyone but there isn't anything "good" about this, I expected this to be something along the lines of a crypto donation to GiveDirectly but this is just a sick wannabe Blackmirror power play.
Screaming kids at Pizza Hut aside, we can't make other people have empathy. They have to find it and explore it themselves, perhaps by seeing others do the same.
It's especially ironic that someone with lowered empathy would be demanding someone else show fake empathy publicly before giving them back control of their own computer.
Or maybe you happen to be a 97-year-old retired nun, who everyone in your neighborhood knows, and it'd be fine. Not trying to be judgemental or anything.
I don't think that's particularly incorrect, isolation from neighbors and the invisibility of the poor makes it a heck of a lot easier to ignore their problems.
I'm not sure in this case it's sympathy or empathy, it sounds like mere facilitation of the potential for future relationships and dialog between poor kids and people well enough off to own their own computer.
Imagining these hackers trying to individually determine whether someone has done a good enough job of pretending they're nice and whether a victim is themselves too poor to do this stuff... pretty amazing that they'd declare themselves the arbitrators of whether something is sufficiently repentant.
And posting it on social media? What, are we doxxing ourselves now to get out of ransomware attacks? I don't even have twitter or facebook or instagram or whatsapp... for good reason! Why make it performative, someone could just send them receipts if the goal was to help regardless of publicity.
I am definitely not suggesting this approach will help, it seems like a ridiculous solution that's all about exploiting performative compassion for the sake of the hacker's egos...
But I also disagree with your statement as a blanket claim. Kids are forced to go to school and while they'll be resentful of the system or their parents or their teachers I haven't really seen kids being resentful of each other and certainly their peer group develops social cohesion and empathy for one another.
Everyone forced to do community service doesn't necessarily resent the people they are helping, they resent the judicial system.
At least, that seems like the rational response to me, it would be incredibly petty to resent some kids you take to dinner just because you're doing it due to blackmail. Resent the blackmailers...
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/compassion/definition
Needless to say, deploying the ransomware discussed in the link would not be a chaotic good act. More like neutral or chaotic evil.
¹ And just to be clear, don't actually do this. I'm never going to do this, never have done this, certainly am not doing it at the moment, and I advise that no one else actually do this. There are better ways to use your time.
What can Jeff Bezos do more positive than creating Amazon?
What can Elon Musk do more positive than creating Tesla and SpaceX?
etc. etc.
Donating
This is probably the cheapest ransomware unlock that's ever been put out there (unless you're based in the US, then good fucking luck on the medical care clause). If you're a company whose security policies are too terrible to survive a ransomware attack, then you'd rather be hit with this one than any of the others.
This is probably only viable in smaller communities where people know one another, which may or may not show something about the authors of the malware. It's not just a social "issue", but rather one of population density, where you end up not knowing almost anyone around you personally.
Approaching random people, worse yet, kids, with promises of food in any metropolitan area or even moderately sized city would be viewed as exceedingly weird and creepy. Source: Eastern European country.
I get what the malware authors were trying to do, but it sounds like a somewhat naive and perhaps detached from reality implementation of a "sort of positive" idea.
It would have been way more viable to understand that payments for scammers work because they don't take hours or days of mucking about, but rather a payment through whatever means are available - which could also be applied to making the people affected donate to any number of charities of their or the authors' choice.