Hello everyone,
We unfortunately have to close the !lemmyshitpost community for the time being. We have been fighting the CSAM (Child Sexual Assault Material) posts all day but there is nothing we can do because they will just post from another instance since we changed our registration policy.
We keep working on a solution, we have a few things in the works but that won’t help us now.
Thank you for your understanding and apologies to our users, moderators and admins of other instances who had to deal with this.
Edit: @Striker@lemmy.world the moderator of the affected community made a post apologizing for what happened. But this could not be stopped even with 10 moderators. And if it wasn’t his community it would have been another one. And it is clear this could happen on any instance.
But we will not give up. We are lucky to have a very dedicated team and we can hopefully make an announcement about what’s next very soon.
Edit 2: removed that bit about the moderator tools. That came out a bit harsher than how we meant it. It’s been a long day and having to deal with this kind of stuff got some of us a bit salty to say the least. Remember we also had to deal with people posting scat not too long ago so this isn’t the first time we felt helpless. Anyway, I hope we can announce something more positive soon.
I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to all of the users here who liked lemmy shit posting. I feel like I let the situation grow too out of control before getting help. Don’t worry I am not quitting. I fully intend on staying around. The other two deserted the community but I won’t. Dm me If you wish to apply for mod.
Sincerest thanks to the admin team for dealing with this situation. I wish I linked in with you all earlier.
@Striker@lemmy.world this is not your fault. You stepped up when we asked you to and actively reached out for help getting the community moderated. But even with extra moderators this can not be stopped. Lemmy needs better moderation tools.
Hopefully the devs will take the lesson from this incident and put some better tools together.
There’s a Matrix Room for building mod tools here maybe we might want to bring up this issue there, just in case they aren’t already aware.
Or we’ll finally accept that the core Lemmy devs aren’t capable of producing a functioning piece of software and fork it.
Its not easy to build a social media app, forking it won’t make it any easier to solve this particular problem. Joining forces to tackle an inevitable problem is the only solution. The Lemmy devs are more than willing to accept pull requests for software improvements.
And who’s gonna maintain the fork? Even less developers from a split community? You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Please, please, please do not blame yourself for this. This is not your fault. You did what you were supposed to do as a mod and stepped up and asked for help when you needed to, lemmy just needs better tools. Please take care of yourself.
This isn’t your fault. Thank you for all you have done in regards to this situation thus far.
It’s not your fault, thank you for your job!
It’s not your fault, these people attacked and we don’t have the proper moderation tools to defend ourselves yet. Hopefully in the future this will change though. As it stands you did the best that you could.
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I love your community and I know it is hard for you to handle this but it isn’t your fault! I hope no one here blames you because it’s 100% the fault of these sick freaks posting CSAM.
Thanks for your work. The community was appreciated.
You don’t have to apologize for having done your job. You did everything right and we appreciate it a lot. I’ve spent the whole day trying to remove this shit from my own instance and understanding how purges, removals and pictrs work. I feel you, my man. The only ones at fault here are the sickos who shared that stuff, you keep holding on.
You didn’t do anything wrong, this isn’t your fault and we’re grateful for the effort. These monsters will be slain, and we will get our community back.
Thank you for your help. It is appreciated.
Really feel for you having to deal with this.
You do a great job. I’ve reported quite a few shit heads there and it gets handled well and quickly. You have no way of knowing if some roach is gonna die after getting squashed or if they are going to keep coming back
You’ve already had to take all that on, don’t add self-blame on top of it. This wasn’t your fault and no reasonable person would blame you. I really feel for what you and the admins have had to endure.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to supports or speak to a mental health professional if you’ve picked up trauma from the shit you’ve had to see. There’s no shame in getting help.
As so many others have said, there’s no need for an apology. Thank you for all of the work that you have been doing!
The fact that you are staying on as mod speaks to your character and commitment to the community.
Contact the FBI
This isn’t as crazy as it may sound either. I saw a similar situation, contacted them with the information I had, and the field agent was super nice/helpful and followed up multiple times with calls/updates.
This doesn’t sound crazy in the least. It sounds like exactly what should be done.
yha, what do people think the FBI is for… this isn’t crazy. They can get access to ISP logs, VPN provider logs, etc.
I think what they’re saying is that contacting the FBI may seem daunting to someone who has never dealt with something like this before, but that they don’t need to worry about it. Just contact them.
Under US jurisdiction, yeah. Could be slightly more difficult depending on the country, LEGAT can’t conduct unilateral operations so they’ll have to cooperate with foreign authorities. These assholes can get away with exploiting jurisdictional boundaries. Hopefully they will be caught, but oh well.
This is good advice; I suspect they’re outside of the FBI’s jurisdiction, but they could also be random idiots, in which case they’re random idiots who are about to become registered sex offenders.
They might be, but I’d imagine most countries have laws on the books about this sort of stuff too.
And it’s something that the nations usually have no issues cooperating with.
The FBI has assisted in a lot of global raids related to CSAM.
There are few situations where pretty much everyone universally agrees to work together. This is one of those situations. Across cultures and nations, pedos are seen as some of the most vile people alive.
The FBI has offices in alot of other countries and work with local law enforcement.
https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/international-offices
Can’t really hide from them unless you live in North Korea or Russia
Wait, is this like China having police offices in other countries?
I knew the US collects taxes on their citizens no matter where they live, but isn’t this kind of excessive? Wasn’t INTERPOL supposed to take care of international crime?
For more than eight decades, the FBI has stationed special agents and other personnel overseas. We help protect Americans back home by building relationships with principal law enforcement, intelligence, and security services around the globe.
It is similar to China’s international police but keep in mind quite a few other countries have a similar setup
I’m just surprised that it’s FBI personnel, I thought the CIA was in charge of international affairs, with INTERPOL acting as liaison for the FBI with other countries.
IIRC in the EU we have EUROPOL acting as liaison between the national law enforcement branches, and while there is nothing stopping personnel from one country to enter another, I don’t think they do. But maybe that’s more like the state vs. federal jurisdictions in the US. On the other hand, it’s been some time since I’ve looked deeper into it, and things keep changing.
I have to wonder if Interpol could help with issues like this I know there are agencies that work together globally to help protect missing and exploited children.
The FBI reports it to interpol I believe, interpol is more of like an international warrant system built from treaties.
FBI would be great in this case tbh. They have the resources.
Perhaps most importantly, it establishes that the mods/admins/etc of the community are not complicit in dissemination of the material. If anyone (isp, cloud provider, law enforcement, etc) tries to shut them down for it, they can point to their active and prudent engagement of proper authorities.
More importantly, and germaine to our conversation, the FBI has the contacts and motivation to work with their international partners wherever the data leads.
This is seriously sad and awful that people would go this far to derail a community. It makes me concerned for other communities as well. Since they have succeeded in having shitpost closed does this mean they will just move on to the next community? That being said here is some very useful information on the subject and what can be done to help curb CSAM.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) CyberTipline: You can report CSAM to the CyberTipline online or by calling 1-800-843-5678. Your report will be forwarded to a law enforcement agency for investigation. The National Sexual Assault Hotline: If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or chat online. The hotline is available 24/7 and provides free, confidential support.
The National Child Abuse Hotline: If you suspect child abuse, you can call the National Child Abuse Hotline at 800-4-A-CHILD (422-4453). The hotline is available 24/7 and provides free, confidential support. Thorn: Thorn is a non-profit organization that works to fight child sexual abuse. They provide resources on how to prevent CSAM and how to report it.
Stop It Now!: Stop It Now! is an organization that works to prevent child sexual abuse. They provide resources on how to talk to children about sexual abuse and how to report it.
Childhelp USA: Childhelp USA is a non-profit organization that provides crisis intervention and prevention services to children and families. They have a 24/7 hotline at 1-800-422-4453. Here are some tips to prevent CSAM:
Talk to your children about online safety and the dangers of CSAM.
Teach your children about the importance of keeping their personal information private. Monitor your children’s online activity.
Be aware of the signs of CSAM, such as children being secretive or withdrawn, or having changes in their behavior. Report any suspected CSAM to the authorities immediately.
So far I have not seen such disgusting material, but I’m saving this comment in case I ever need the information.
Are there any other numbers or sites people can contact in countries other than the USA?
It’s probably going to be country dependent
Of course yes. But I’ve discovered that cell phones are programmed to translate emergency numbers even.
In the USA, our main emergency number is 911, but I found out (quite by accident), that dialing 08 brings you to emergency services.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_numbers
Not that I’m familiar with Rust at all, but… perhaps we need to talk about this.
The only thing that could have prevented this is better moderation tools. And while a lot of the instance admins have been asking for this, it doesn’t seem to be on the developers roadmap for the time being. There are just two full-time developers on this project and they seem to have other priorities. No offense to them but it doesn’t inspire much faith for the future of Lemmy.
Lets be productive. What exactly are the moderation features needed, and what would be easiest to implement into the Lemmy source code? Are you talking about a mass-ban of users from specific instances? A ban of new accounts from instances? Like, what moderation tool exactly is needed here?
Speculating:
Restricting posting from accounts that don’t meet some adjustable criteria. Like account age, comment count, prior moderation action, average comment length (upvote quota maybe not, because not all instances use it)
Automatic hash comparison of uploaded images with database of registered illegal content.
On various old-school forums, there’s a simple (and automated) system of trust that progresses from new users (who might be spam)… where every new user might need a manual “approve post” before it shows up. (And this existed in Reddit in some communities too).
And then full powers granted to the user eventually (or in the case of StackOverlow, automated access to the moderator queue).
What are the chances of a hash collision in this instance? I know accidental hash collisions are usually super rare, but with enough people it’d probably still happen every now and then, especially if the system is designed to detect images similar to the original illegal image (to catch any minor edits).
Is there a way to use multiple hashes from different sources to help reduce collisions? For an example, checking both the MD5 and SHA256 hashes instead of just one or the other, and then it only gets flagged if both match within a certain degree.
Traditional hash like MD5 and SHA256 are not locality-sensitive. Can’t be used to detect match with certain degree. Otherwise, yes you are correct. Perceptual hashes can create false positive. Very unlikely, but yes it is possible. This is not a problem with perfect solution. Extraordinary edge cases must be resolved on a case by case basis.
And yes, simplest solution must be implemented first always. Tracking post reputation, captcha before post, wait for account to mature before can post, etc. The problem is that right now the only defense we have access to are mods. Mods are people, usually with eyeballs. Eyeballs which will be poisoned by CSAM so we can post memes and funnies without issues. This is not fair to them. We must do all we can, and if all we can includes perceptual hashing, we have moral obligation to do so.
Something I thought about that might be helpful is if mods had the ability to add a post delay on a community basis. Basically, the delay would be moderator adjustable, but only moderators and admins would be able to see the post for X number of minutes after being posted. It’d help for situations like ongoing attacks where you don’t necessarily want to have to manually approve posts, but you want a chance to catch any garbage before the post goes public.
Edit: and yeah, one of the reasons I’m aware that perceptual hashes can have collisions is because a number of image viewers/cataloging tools like xnview mp or hydrus network use hash collisions to help identify duplicate images. However, I’ve seen collisions between unrelated images when lowering the sensitivity which is why I was wondering if there was a way to use multiple hashing algorithms to help reduce false positives without sacrificing the usefulness of it.
Or just making posts approval only with a mod queue
I beleive there are several readily available databases of hashes of csam material for exactly this kind of scanning. Looks like there are some open source ones.
Some top results: https://github.com/topics/csam
This looks to be the top project: https://prostasia.org/project/csam-scanning-plugins/
Could they not just change one pixel to get another hash?
I guess it’d be a matter of incorporating something that hashes whatever it is that’s being uploaded. One takes that hash and checks it against a database of known CSAM. If match, stop upload, ban user and complain to closest officer of the law. Reddit uses PhotoDNA and CSAI-Match. This is not a simple task.
Couldn’t one small change in the picture change the whole hash?
Good question. Yes. Also artefacts from compression can fuck it up. However hash comparison returns percentage of match. If match is good enough, it is CSAM. Davai ban. There is bigger issue however for developers of Lemmy, I assume. It is a philosophical pizdec. It is that if we elect to use PhotoDNA and CSAI Match, Lemmy is now at the whims of Microsoft and Google respectively.
Honestly I’d rather that than see shit like this any day.
The bigger thing is that hash detection tools don’t want to give access to just anyone, and just anyone can run a Lemmy instance. The concern is that you’re effectively giving the CSAM people a way to know if they’ll be detected.
Perhaps they can allow some of the biggest Lemmy instances to use the tech, but I wouldn’t expect it to be available to everyone.
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Mod tools are not Lemmy. Give admins and mods an option. Even a paid one. Hell. Admins of Lemmy.world could have us donate extra to cover costs of api services.
I agree. Perhaps what Lemmy developers can do is they can put slot for generic middleware before whatever the POST request is in Lemmy API for uploading content? This way, owner of instance can choose to put whatever middleware for CSAM they want. This way, we are not dependent on developers of Lemmy for solution to pedo problem.
If they hash the file binary data, like CRC32 or SHA, yes. But there are other hash types out there, which are more like “fingerprints” of an image. Think of how Shazam or Sound Hound can recognize a song playing, despite the extra wind, static, etc that’s present. There are similar algorithms for images/videos.
No idea how difficult those are to implement, though.
There are FOSS applications that can do that (czkawka for example). What I’m not sure it’s if the specific algorithm used is available and, more importantly, if the csam hashes are available for general audiences. I would assume if they are any attacker could check first and get the right amount of changes.
One bit, in fact. Luckily there are other ways of comparing images without actually showing them to human eyes that allow you to calculate a percentage of similarity.
Reddit had automod which was highly configurable.
Reddit automod is also a source for all the porn communities. Have you ever checked automod comment history?
Yeah, I have. Like 2/3 of automod comments are in porn communities.
What? Reddit automod is not a source for porn. What would be happening is the large quantity of content it reacts to there.
It literally reads your config in your wiki and performs actions based on that. The porn communities using it are using it to moderate their subs. You can look at the post history. https://www.reddit.com/user/AutoModerator It is commenting on posts IN those communities as a reaction to triggers but isn’t posting porn (unless they put in their config)
Not worth it if you don’t moderate on reddit but read the how to docs for reddit automod, it is an excellent tool for spam management and the source is open prior to reddit acquiring it and making it shit. https://www.reddit.com/wiki/automoderator/full-documentation
No shit, ya don’t say?
Where the hell you think I got that list from? I literally filtered every single subreddit that AutoModerator replied in for like three months.
Bruh you’re preaching to the person that accumulated the data. That’s the data it puked up. I can’t help it that most of them happen to be filth communities.
So you should understand that what you said is invalid. Automod doesn’t post porn without a subreddit owner configuring it to and just because it posts 2/3 to NSFW subs doesn’t mean it is posting content just working more there.
We could 100% take advantage of a similar tool, maybe we some better controls on what mods can make it do. I’m working to bring BotDefence to Lemmy because it is needed.
You completely missed the point.
By the statistics of the data I found, most of the subreddits using AutoModerator are filth communities.
So you can reverse that, check AutoModerator comment history, and find a treasure trove of filth.
I can’t help that these are the facts I dug up, but yeah AutoModerator is most active in porn communities.
Too stupid to argue with. You don’t even understand your own “data”.
The best feature the current Lemmy devs could work on is making the process to onboard new devs smoother. We shouldn’t expect anything more than that for the near future.
I haven’t actually tried cloning and compiling, so if anyone has comments here they’re more than welcome.
I think having a means of viewing uploaded images as an admin would be helpful, as well disabling external image caching. Like an “uploaded” gallery for admins to view that can potentially hook into Photodna/CSAI-Match or whatever.
I think it would be an AI autoscan that flags some posts for mod approval before they show up to the public and perhaps more fine-grained controls for how media is posted like for instance only allowing certain image hosting sites and no directly uploaded images.
That statement is just outright wrong though. They could easily use CloudFlares CSAM monitoring and it never would have been a problem. A lot of people in these threads, including admins, have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.
Cloudflare CSAM protection is not available outside of the US, unfortunately.
There are several other solutions including ones from Microsoft and Facebook.
Probably hashing and scanning any uploaded media against some of the known DBs of CSAM hashes.
Iirc that’s how Reddit/FB/Insta/Etc. handle it
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The sad thing is that all we can usually do is make it harder for attackers. Which is absolutely still worth doing, to be clear. But if an attacker wants to cause trouble badly enough, there’s always ways around everything. Eg, image detection can be foiled with enough transformation, account age limits can be gotten past by a patient attacker. Minimum karma can be botted (even easier than ever with AI) and Lemmy is especially easy to bot karma because you can just spin up an instance with all the bots your heart desires. If posts have to be approved, attackers can even just hotlink to innocent images and then change the image after it’s approved.
Law enforcement can do a lot more than we can, by subpoenaing ISPs or VPNs. But law enforcement is slow and unreliable, so that’s also imperfect.
The amount of people in these comments asking the mods not to cave is bonkers.
This isn’t Reddit. These are hobbyists without legal teams to a) fend off false allegations or b) comply with laws that they don’t have any deep understanding of.
This is flat out disgusting. Extremely questionable someone having an arsenal of this crap to spread to begin with. I hope they catch charges.
There are just two full-time developers on this project and they seem to have other priorities. No offense to them but it doesn’t inspire much faith for the future of Lemmy.
this doesn’t seem like a respectful comment to make. People have responsibilities; they aren’t paid for this. It doesn’t seem to fair to make criticisms of something when we aren’t doing anything to provide a solution. A better comment would be “there are just 2 full time developers on this project and they have other priorities. we are working on increasing the number of full time developers.”
Imagine if you were the owner of a really large computer with CSAM in it. And there is in fact no good way to prevent creeps from putting more into it. And when police come to have a look at your CSAM, you are liable for legal bullshit. Now imagine you had dependents. You would also be well past the point of being respectful.
On that note, the captain db0 has raised an issue on the github repository of LemmyNet, requesting essentially the ability to add middleware that checks the nature of uploaded images (issue #3920 if anyone wants to check). Point being, the ball is squarely in their court now.
I think the FBI or eqivilant keeps a record of hashes for a known CASM and middleware should be able to compare to that. Hopefully, if a match is found, kill the post and forward all info on to LE.
Interesting. But aren’t hashes unique to a specific photo? Just a single change to the photo would inevitably change its hash.
I think Apple was going to implement a similar system and deploy to all iPhones/Macs in some iOS/macOS update. However was eventually 86’d due to privacy concerns from many people and the possible for abuse and/or false positives.
A system like this might work on a small scale though as part of moderating tools. Not sure where you would get a constantly updated database of CSAM hashes though.
Interesting. But aren’t hashes unique to a specific photo? Just a single change to the photo would inevitably change its hash.
Most people are lazy and stupid, so maybe hash checking is enough to catch a huge portion (probably more than 50%, maybe even 80% or 90%?) of the CSAM that doesn’t bother (or know how) to do that?
I’m almost positive they’ve been developing an image recognition AI that will make slightly altering csam photos obsolete.
Here’s hoping.
A hash would change if even one bit changed in that file. This could be from corruption, automated resizing by any photo processing tools (i.e., most sites will resize photos if you give them one too big), saving a lossy file time again (adding more jpg), etc… This is why there aren’t many automated tools for this detection. Sites that have tried by using skin tones in a photo have failed spectacularly.
I’ve never heard of this FBI middleware. Does anyone have the link to this? I’d like to understand what tools are available to combat this as I’ve been considering starting my own instance for some time now.
In my utopia world, the FBI has a team updating the DB.
The utopia algorithim would do multiple subsets of the picture so cropping or watermarking wouldn’t break the test (assume the ‘crux’ of the CSAM would be most likely unaltered?) , maybe handle simple image transformations (color, tint, gamma, etc.) with a formula.
What you’re talking about is digital (aka forensic) watermarking.
IMO scanning images before posting them to a forum is a distinct and utterly completely different world than having your photo collection scanned. Especially in context and scale
You can already protect your instance using CloudFlare’s CSAM protection, and sorry to say it, but I would not use db0’s solution. It is more likely to get you in trouble than help you out. I posted about it in their initial thread, but they are not warning people about actual legal requirements that are required in many places and their script can get you put in jail (yes, put in jail for deleting CSAM).
The developers of LemmyNet are being asked for the ability to define a subroutine by which uploaded images are to be preprocessed and denied or passed thereafter. There is no such feature right now. Even if they wanted to use CloudFlare CSAM protection, they couldn’t. That’s the entire problem. This preprocessing routine could use Microsoft PhotoDNA and Google CSAI, it could use a self-hosted alternative as db0 desires or it could even be your own custom solution that doesn’t destroy, but stores CSAM on a computer you own and stops it from being posted.
Even if they wanted to use CloudFlare CSAM protection, they couldn’t.
? CF’s solution happens at the DNS level. It has absolutely nothing to do with lemmy and there’s nothing the devs could do to change that.
Yeah I just looked it up. Serving stuff through CF does a check for illicit material. Pretty neat. Be that as it may, the original complaint is that Lemmy is lacking moderation tools. Such a moderation tool would be something that disallows CSAM even being stored in the server in the first place.
I agree with you, I’d just gently suggest that it’s borne of what is probably significant upset at having to deal with what they’re having to deal with.
we are working on increasing the number of full time developers.
I see where you are coming from, but who is supposed to make this statement, LW admins? Because it’s not their role. And if it’s Lemmy devs, then it shouldn’t be we.
I see where you are coming from, but who is supposed to make this statement, LW admins? Because it’s not their role. And if it’s Lemmy devs, then it shouldn’t be we.
whoever came up with “we should have full time developers” and is managing that team should be the person thinking of how to help the full time developers given the increased responsibilities/work load
Lemmy is developed open source and the people operating the servers are not the same people writing the source code.
While I do not agree with the salty comment made about an amazing open source project, they corrected it. Maybe this is a great opportunity for people to contribute. Not everyone needs to be a programmer to provide value to a project like this. Sources can be found here: https://github.com/LemmyNet
Are you volunteering?
No?
Then shut up and let the adults talk about how to solve things.
I mean, the “other priorities” comment does seem to be in bad taste. But as for the comment on the future of Lemmy, I dunno. I feel like they’re just being realistic. I think the majority of us understand the devs have lives but if things don’t get sorted out soon enough it could impact the future of Lemmy.
Thing is, if this continues to be a problem and if the userbase/admins of instances are organised, we can shift those priorities. They may not have envisioned this being a problem with the work they decided to work on for the next several months. Truly, the solution is to get more developers involved so that more can happen at once.
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No one is paid for this, but moderation is going to become a problem for Lemmy and the volunteers who are admins are going to need support.
yes, that’s what i’m saying. We should acknowledge that we are fortunate to have dedicated volunteer devs and work on helping/supporting them.
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There are paid devs?
They just edited their comment
Wish I was a dev. I’d jump in to help so fast.
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I can’t seem to find the AMA thread from the devs but I remember they said they actually are being paid by some dutch organisation
Funded by https://nlnet.nl/
plus ~4400$/month from donations from
https://opencollective.com/lemmy
https://www.patreon.com/dessalines
https://liberapay.com/dessalines/
https://liberapay.com/nutomic/
They also take bitcoin, etherium, monero and cardano.
DEVELOPERS produce a software to help people post images and text online. Nothing bad about that.
ADMINS install the developers software on a server and run it as an instance.
MODS (if any exist besides the admin) moderate the instance to keep illegal content off the site.
USERS may choose to use the software to post CSAM.
None of these groups of people have paid for or are getting paid for their time. USERS generally don’t take much legal risk for what’s posted, as instance owners don’t ask for personally identifiable information from users.
Sites like reddit, although we all hate it, do make a profit, and some of that profit is used to pay “trust and safety” teams who are paid (generally not very well, usually in underdeveloped or developing countries) to wade through thousands of pictures of CSAM, SA, DV/IPV and other violent material, taking it down as it gets posted to facebook, reddit, other major online properties.
—-
Developers, admins and mods are generally doing this in their free time. Not sure how many people realize this but developers, admins and mods are also people who need to eat - developers have a skill of developing software, so many open source devs are also employed and contribute to open source in their off time. Admins may be existing sysadmins at companies but admin lemmy instances in their off time. Mods do it to protect the community and the instance itself.
USERS can be a bit self-important at times. We get it, you all generate the content on this site. Some content isn’t just unwanted though, it’s illegal and if not responded to quickly could mean not only a shutdown instance but also possible jailtime for admins, who ultimately will be the ones who are running a “reddit-like site” or “a haven for child porn”.
Good bot
People have responsibilities
Exactly - when you create a site, you have a responsibility to make sure it’s not used to distribute child porn.
we are working on increasing the number of full time developers
That’s not how it works, this is up to Lemmy devs themselves and not up to any individual Lemmy instance.
Fucking bastards. I don’t even know what beef they have with the community and why, but using THAT method to get them to shut down is nothing short of despicable. What absolute scum.
I hope the devs take this seriously as an existential threat to the fediverse. Lemmyshitpost was one of the largest communities on the network both in AUPH and subscribers. If taking the community down is the only option here, that’s extremely insufficient and bodes death for the platform at the hands of uncontrolled spam.
Genuine question: won’t they just move to spamming CSAM in other communities?
We have been fighting the CSAM (Child Sexual Assault Material) posts all day but there is nothing we can do because they will just post from another instance since we changed our registration policy.
It’s likely that we’ll be seeing a large number of instances switch to whitelist based federation instead of the current blacklist based one, especially for niche instances that does not want to deal with this at all (and I don’t blame them).
Sounds like the 4chan raids of old.
Batten down, report the offender’s to the authorities, and then clean up the mess!
Good job so far _
How does closing lemmyshitpost do anything to solve the issue? Isn’t it a foregone conclusion that the offenders would just start targeting other communities or was there something unique about lemmyshitpost that made it more susceptible?
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How would you respond to having someone else forcibly load up your pc with child porn over the Internet? Would you take it offline?
But that’s not what happened. They didn’t take the server offline. They banned a community. If some remote person had access to my pc and they were loading it up with child porn, I would not expect that deleting the folder would fix the problem. So I don’t understand what your analogy is trying to accomplish because it’s faulty.
Also, I think you are confusing my question as some kind of disapproval. It isn’t. If closing a community solves the problem then I fully support the admin team actions.
I’m just questioning whether that really solves the problem or not. It was a community created on Lemmy.world, not some other instance. So if the perpetrators were capable of posting to it, they are capable of posting to any community on lemmy.world. You get that, yeah?
My question is just a request for clarification. How does shutting down 1 community stop the perpetrators from posting the same stuff to other communities?
Fact of the matter is that these mods are not lawyers, and even if they were not liable, they would not have the means to fight this in court if someone falsely, or legitimately, claimed they were liable. They’re hobbits with day jobs.
I also mod a few large communities here, and if I’m ever in that boat, I would also jump. I have other shit to do, and I don’t have the time or energy to fight trolls like that.
If this was Reddit, I’d let all the paid admins, legal, PR, SysOps, engineers and UX folks figure it out. But this isn’t Reddit. It’s all on the hobbyist mods to figure it out. Many are not going to have the energy to put up with it.
Removed by mod
How does it limit liability when they could continue posting that content to any/every other community on lemmy.world?
Removed by mod
They also changed the account sign ups to be application only so people can’t create accounts without being approved.
It doesn’t solve the bigger moderation problem, but it solves the immediate issue for the mods who don’t want to go to jail for modding a community hosting CSM.
Doesn’t that send a clear message to the perpetrators that they can cause any community to be shut down and killed and all they have to do is post CSAM to it? What makes you or anyone else think that, upon seeing that lemmyshitpost is gone, that the perpetrators will all just quit. Was lemmyshitpost the only community they were able to post in?
Yup. The perpetrators win.
If you were in their shoes, would you want to risk going to jail for kiddy porn, risk having your name associated with CSM online, or drain your personal savings account to fight these folks?
These mods are not protected by a well funded private legal team. This isn’t Reddit.
You don’t have to explain how liability works. I get it. What I don’t get is how removing that specific community is going to limit their liability when the perpetrators will just target a different community.
Sign-ups are manual approval applications, no more automated sign-ups from them, if they have existing accounts and target another community it’ll be closed as well and those accounts banned, there isn’t a stream of new accounts though because all accounts going forward need to be manually approved.
One of the ways you avoid liability is you show that you’re actively taking measures to prevent illegal content.
The perps are taking a big risk as well. Finding and uploading csam means being in possession of it. So we can at least take solace in knowing it’s not a tool that just anyone wiill use to take down a community.
Uploading to websites counts as distribution. The authorities will actually care about this. It’s not just some small thing that is technically a crime. It’s big time crime being used for skme thing petty.
So while the perp might win in the short term, they are risking their lives using this tactic. I’m not terribly worried about it becoming a common tactic
I’d anything, if I were the one doing this, I’d be worried that I might be pissing off the wrong group of people. If they keep at it and become a bigger problem, everyone is going to be looking for them. And then that person is going to big boy prison.
That is a great point. I don’t know if the admin team are proactively reporting that activity to law enforcement, but I hope they are.
Is it possible to (at least temporarily):
- Turn off instance image hosting (disable pictrs)
- Disallow image and video posts across all communities
- As in Firefish, turn off caching of remote images from other instances.
whilst longer term solutions are sought? This would at least ensure poor mods aren’t exposed to this shit and an instance could be more positive they’re not inadvertently hosting CSAM.
I assume you’ve contacted the FBI, but if not PLEASE DO.
