Social media have reconfigured the international relief landscape by opening discursive spaces for grassroots storytelling and activism. Bringing the images of distant suffering closer than ever before and affording an array of opportunities for framing, representing, and responding to crisis events, platforms have shifted the relationship between information and capacity for action. This shift has precipitated the move of geographically dispersed humanitarian actors from the margins of the global geopolitical landscape toward its centre. Situating the inquiry in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, this presentation foregrounds participative humanitarian patterns across platform-mediated international communities at scale. In doing so, it raises a series of important questions regarding values, motivations, and responsibilities of witnessing remote wars that hit close to home.