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: @[email protected] 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.
Fuck these trolls
troll is too mild of an adjective for these people
How about “pedophile”? I mean, they had to have the images to post them.
“Terrorist”. Having the images doesn’t mean they liked them, they used them to terrorize a whole community though.
“Petophilile enabled Terrorist” or “petophilic terrorist” depending on the person
It still means they can tolerate CSAM or are normalized to it enough that they can feel anything other than discust during “shipping and handling”.
All of your comments have “banned” next to them for me (logged in via lemmy.world using Liftoff) - any idea why?
I assume you’re not actually banned…?
They were banned because they were defending pedophilia (advocating for them to be able to get off to what turns them on) and also trolling very aggressively. You can look at them in the Modlog on the Website, not sure if Apps implement the modlog yet though.
Ah thanks, I’ve seen it a few times but thought it was a bug. Why are people like this!
I have not clue, people can be quite toxic and horrible. Also noticed that they reduced his ban, not sure why, defending pedophilia is pretty bad and definitely carries legal risk but it’s not my call to make.
Yeah, got banned for forgetting that some axioms give people free pass to say whatever they want, no matter how they say it… and replying in kind is forbidden. My bad.
You were banned because you were arguing for why people shouldn’t be arrested for possession of CSAM material, trolling and straw-manning in the replies, and on top of that attempting to seriously and honestly advocate for pedophiles on another community, which is at best borderline illegal (anyone can check the modlog on that one if they don’t believe me, I wouldn’t make such claims if they weren’t true).
So to summerize you were banned for
- Trolling
- Promoting Illegal Activities (Pedophilla and CSAM)
Yeah honestly report all of those accounts to law enforcement. It’s unlikely they’d be able to do much, I assume, but these people are literally distributing CSAM.
Yeah, this isn’t just joking or shitposting. This is the kind of shit that gets people locked up in federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison for decades. The feds don’t care if you sought out the CSAM, because it still exists on your device regardless of intent.
The laws about possessing CSAM are written in a way that any plausible deniability is removed, specifically to prevent pedophiles from being able to go “oh lol a buddy sent that to me as a joke” and getting acquitted. The courts don’t care why you have CSAM on your server. All they care about is the fact that you do. And since you own the server, you own the CSAM and they’ll prosecute you for it.
And not just the instance admins would be at risk as well. Any time you view an image your device is making a local copy of it. Meaning every person who viewed the image even accidentally is at risk as well.
Sounds like a digital form of SWATing.
That’s not a troll, CSAM goes well beyond trolling, pedophile would be a more accurate term for them.
Yeah. A troll might post something like a ton of oversized images of pig buttholes. Who the fuck even has access to CSAM to post? That’s something you only have on hand if you’re a predator already. Nor is it something you can shrug off like “lol I was only trolling”. It’s a crime that will send you to jail for years. It’s a major crime that gets entire police units dedicated to it. It’s a huuuuge deal and I cannot even fathom what kind of person would risk years in prison to sabotage an internet forum.
My thoughts exactly, like if they were just spamming goatsee or something, that would be one thing…
But this raises several questions, and they can only have grimdark answers.
Dont forget they are doing this to harm others, they deserve the name “e-terrorist” or simmlar. hey are still absolutely pedophiles. Their bombing out a space, not trying to set up shop.
I would definately agree that this would very likely count as cyber terrorism, and if it doesn’t it should.
deleted by creator
Simply having it to post makes you culpable. It’s way beyond trolling.
deleted by creator
I’d say the proper word is ‘criminal.’
Criminals.
Trolls? In most regions of the planet, I am fairly certain their actions would be considered criminal.
To be fair, that is exactly what trolls did in the wild west days of the net. Back when not many people had home computers, much less the internet. CP and gore, the proverbial shit flung by the troll chimps.
The Internet is essentially a small microbiome of beautiful flora and fauna that grew on top of a lake of sewage.
The Internet is a reflection of humanity, minus some of the fear of getting punched in the face.
Yeah, back in the Limewire/Napster/etc days, it wasn’t unheard of for people to troll by relabeling CSAM as a popular movie or TV show. Oh, you wanted to download the latest Friends episode? Congrats, now you have CSAM because a troll uploaded it with the title “Friends S10E7.mov”
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.
@[email protected] 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.
Definitely not your fault mate, you did what anyone would do, it’s a new community and shit happens
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.
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.
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.
You might be surprised to discover that the USA does not believe their laws end at their borders. That is why Kim Dotcom was arrested by the FBI in NZ for violating US law.
In this case I doubt any LE agency abroad wouldn’t like the tip off.
I’m not saying anybody takes csam less serious. But I wish the American government Went after minor csam events as much as they go after copyright/IP violations. Its not like mike pompeo flew out to other countries to strong arm them into new laws to prevent csam like they have done with pirates who threatened Hollywood profits
We did that back in the 1990s under Clinton and a bit under GWB as well. If I recall correctly we got really firm with Japan about how they needed to ban CP there.
There is no CP and no porn in Japan… add some tiny censor bars, and it’s just some wholesome family tentacle fun!
That one backfired spectacularly.
As I recall the laws at the time were that you could not show pubic hair so naked kids who had no pubes were fine.
TIL. Oh well, it probably will keep backfiring as long as Japan insists on having “morality laws” instead of something more objective.
Yeah there was even that case where a citizen and resident of Mexico was arrested and detained in the US for breaking US law, even tho it technically didn’t apply to them since they were under Mexican sovereignty… Borders mean little to the US
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.
‘Criminal activity should be reported to your local or national police. INTERPOL does not carry out investigations or arrest people; this is the responsibility of national police.’
From their website.
What the hell do they actually do then?
“Interpol provides investigative support, expertise and training to law enforcement worldwide, focusing on three major areas of transnational crime: terrorism, cybercrime and organized crime. Its broad mandate covers virtually every kind of crime, including crimes against humanity, child pornography, drug trafficking and production, political corruption, intellectual property infringement, as well as white-collar crime. The agency also facilitates cooperation among national law enforcement institutions through criminal databases and communications networks. Contrary to popular belief, Interpol is itself not a law enforcement agency.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterpolHuh. Thanks!
The FBI reports it to interpol I believe, interpol is more of like an international warrant system built from treaties.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
None of that really works anymore in the age of AI inpainting. Hashes / Perceptual worked well before but the people doing this are specifically interested in causing destruction and chaos with this content. they don’t need it to be authentic to do that.
It’s a problem that requires AI on the defensive side but even that is just going to be eternal arms race. This problem cannot be solved with technology, only mitigated.
The ability to exchange hashes on moderation actions against content may offer a way out, but it will change the decentralized nature of everything - basically bringing us back to the early days of the usenet, Usenet Death Penaty, etc.
Not true.
A simple CAPTCHA got rid of a huge set of idiotic script-kiddies. CSAM being what it is, could (and should) result in an immediate IP ban. So if you’re “dumb” enough to try to upload a well-known CSAM hash, then you absolutely deserve the harshest immediate ban automatically.
You’re pretty much like the story of the economist who refuses to believe that $20 exists on a sidewalk. “Oh, but if that $20 really existed on the sidewalk there, then it would have been arbitraged away already”. Well guess what? Human nature ain’t economic theory. Human nature ain’t cybersecurity.
Idiots will do dumb, easy attacks because they’re dumb and easy. We need to defend against the dumb-and-easy attacks, before spending more time working on the harder, rarer attacks.
You don’t get their ip when they post from other instances. I’m surprised this hasn’t resulted in defed.
I’m sorry but you don’t want to use permanent IP bans. Most residential circuits are DHCP meaning banning via IP only has a short term positive effect.
That said automatic scanning of known hashes, and automatically reporting to relevant authorities with relevant details should be doable (provided there is a database somewhere - I honestly have never looked).
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.
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.
I was just discussing this under another post and turns out that the Germans have already developed a rule-based auto moderator that they use on their instance:
https://github.com/Dakkaron/SquareModBot
This could be adopted by
lemmy.worldby simply modifying the config fileThat 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
They’re sent to a 3rd party that does the checks. For example https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/reference/csam-scanning/
The actual DB of hashes isn’t released to the public as it would enable those who traffic in such content to use it to find the material that doesn’t match much more easily.
https://protectingchildren.google/#tools-to-fight-csam
That appears to be the one that Facebook and Reddit use.
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.
This is flat out disgusting. Extremely questionable someone having an arsenal of this crap to spread to begin with. I hope they catch charges.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They just edited their comment
Wish I was a dev. I’d jump in to help so fast.
I’m a dev but i’m in no way familiar with Rust (or more importantly, the code structure).
Very early on I also had a look at the codebase for their join-lemmy.org site to see if I could contibute some UX changes to make it less text-heavy, but the framework they use for the UI is something I’m not familiar with either.
Perhaps they’re both things to revisit when I have more spare time…
Maybe you could start with making pull-requests to help and maybe also writting them an application on Matrix. I’m not being snarky just pointing out that it’s easier to help than you might think.
I think taco butt plug meant that they aren’t a developer, like at all, so can’t help with coding or PRs or anything.
I have no idea what a pull request or matrix is but I’ll start reading about them.
You don’t become a developer by wishing. Here’s a tutorial if you want to learn
(edit: Rust, not Go)
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.
Please get some legal advice, this is so fucked up.
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 _
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).
Genuine question: won’t they just move to spamming CSAM in other communities?
good thing you did it the way you did nobody should have to look at awful stuff like this. keep your mind healthy nobody should have to deal with that
I’m afraid the fediverse will need a crowdsec-like decentralized banning platform. Get banned one platform for this shit, get banned everywhere.
I’m willing to participate in fleshing that out.
Edit: it’s just an idea, I do not have all the answers, otherwise I’d be building it.
