LemmyWorld forced to close shitposting community due to CSAM spammers

https://lemm.ee/post/5814485

LemmyWorld forced to close shitposting community due to CSAM spammers - lemm.ee

They also shut down registration [https://lemmy.world/post/3995057?scrollToComments=true] Whoever is spamming CP deserves the woodchipper

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.

God, lemmy.world admins are something else

I mean, they are correct and a majority of other lemmy admins would agree with that statement.

They are correct, but I wanted to address the attitude towards the people doing basically free work.

lemm.ee/comment/2872722

LemmyWorld forced to close shitposting community due to CSAM spammers - lemm.ee

They also shut down registration [https://lemmy.world/post/3995057?scrollToComments=true] Whoever is spamming CP deserves the woodchipper

Nope, they are being paid now. They receive an immense amount of donations now, enough to likely make a solid monthly income. Take a look at their liberapay page if you don’t believe me. I understand that to a degree, but it only goes so far. When they are actively ignoring safety features despite its urgency in spite of that fact is difficult to justify.

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/LICENSE

The software provided as is. Period. They never agreed to be support boys for someone, and the amount of work doesn’t really correlate to the amount of money they get from donations unless they both live in a third world country.

jacobtomlinson.dev/…/dont-be-that-open-source-use…

It’s just a matter of not being entitled, that’s it. All I’m asking for is so that people would be more polite to FOSS devs. If they stop doing their work right now what are you going to do? Implement the mod tools yourself? Then go ahead.

lemmy/LICENSE at main · LemmyNet/lemmy

🐀 A link aggregator and forum for the fediverse. Contribute to LemmyNet/lemmy development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
I’m sorry, but I have difficulty being polite to someone who has actively ignored addressing safety concerns that were brought up months ago. FOSS or not.
Stop misconstruing it as safety. It’s about legality. Nobody’s safety is in jeopardy because they saw an illegal image accidentally. This is about following the law, not protecting the safety of users.
It ties into safety as well, websites have “trust and safety” teams. This is where it falls under. Sorry for not being more concise.
No need to apologize, I just think safety is a misnomer here.
“CSAM laws aren’t for the safety of real people” is one of the hottest takes I’ve ever seen in my life

Straight outta reddit with that one.

I’m just going to copy paste my other comment:

I thought it was pretty apparent we were talking about Lemmy, but okay.

The statements were about the Lemmy devs can and/or should be doing for safety. They simply do not have the power to stop child abuse by developing a social media platform. So then the safety in question must be the safety of people using Lemmy, because the Lemmy devs have some direct power over that.

I’m sure you feel very morally aloof with your righteous retort, though.

Yes. Obviously we’re talking about Lemmy. We just still fundamentally disagree on the forms of harm, psychic and physical, that can be experienced through the rapid propagation of CSAM. Lemmy’s lacking mod tools have been a major topic of discussion for a while now. I don’t care to carry on this conversation because it’s clear our starting points are too far apart to meet in the middle

I think the other guy’s comment is well suited as a response to this, so again I’ll copy paste:

The theory behind why CSAM is illegal is that if someone is willing to pay for CSAM it incentivizes production of even more CSAM content to receive more payment. That incentivized additional production means even more abuse. A perfectly reasonable take and something that I think can be demonstrated.

But why would you accidentally seeing CSAM prompt you to give payment to create that incentivization?

How could reason possibly prevail when the subject matter is so sensitive?

Take a look at their liberapay page if you don’t believe me.

I took a look. “Lemmy receives US$392.03 per week from 287 patrons.”

enough to likely make a solid monthly income.

Approximately $850 per month each. Is that a solid income? Lots of developers are making $850 per day!

When they are actively ignoring safety features

The license agreement clearly places this onus on the instance operators. If they cannot commit to those terms, why did they accept the agreement? It is not like someone holds a gun to your back and forces you to start a Lemmy instance.

I’m sorry for not being more focused on being nicer to the devs of lemmy after problems that were discussed nearly a month ago being ignored have caused me and other instance admins to have to deal with the stress of dealing with CSAM federating into our instances and having to witness that content in order to remove it.

That is sarcasm by the way. In comparison to how I actually feel currently, I could be a lot more indignant about this but I am fighting that urge as it is not productive.

These comments so far stink, yall are something else.

OK, I am going to take a minute away from the shit stirring and potentially provide some insight speaking as an admin who’s had the misfortune of dealing with this so I can maybe shift this comment section into an actually meaningful discussion.

You can have your own opinion and feelings against lemmy.world but, 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.

This is correct. Most lemmy admins likely agree as well, I don’t speak for anyone but myself but I can say that I think it would be hard to find someone who disagreed. What happened today is a result of a catastrophic failure on lemmys end, with issues that should have been addressed over a month ago just being completely ignored. The lemmy devs shared a roadmap during their AMA & they essentially were more concerned with making shit go faster… that’s about it.

As an admin, how do kbin moderation tools compare?

Also does lemmy.world have the spare cash to offer cash for features?

Kbin moderation tools are worse. And potentially. I guess a bug bounty could be started up.

Okay, honest question. What mod tools are lacking. If there's something needed, what is that thing or things?

I went over to the feature request page for Lemmy and I couldn't find anything massive in terms of requests for moderation tools that would have been sure fire ways to stop this particular event.

That said, there is over 400 open feature requests alone on Lemmy's github. I obviously couldn't go through every single one. But coming from the kbin side I'm just curious about our Lemmy brothers and sisters. It sounds dire and I'm woefully under informed on how bad it is.

Agreed, I don’t know what AutoMod did on Reddit but if what mods need is a rule-configurable post remover then I’d be happy to clobber together something in Python

There’s this bot that is used in a couple of communities on feddit.de:

github.com/Dakkaron/SquareModBot

GitHub - Dakkaron/SquareModBot

Contribute to Dakkaron/SquareModBot development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Here’s some things Beehaw admind have been asking for from moderation since June: beehaw.org/comment/397674

See github issues #3255 and #3275

Defederation from instances suspected of becoming bots haven - Beehaw

We’ve defederated from : lemmy.k6qw.com,lemmy.podycust.co.uk,waveform.social,bbs.darkwitch.net,cubing.social,lemmy.roombob.cat,lemmy.jtmn.dev,lemmy.juggler.jp,bolha.social,sffa.community,dot.surf,granitestate.social,veenk.help,lemmyunchained.net,wumbo.buzz,lemmy.sbs,lemmy.shwizard.chat,clatter.eu,mtgzone.com,oceanbreeze.earth,mindshare.space,lemmy.tedomum.net,voltage.vn,lemmy.fyi,demotheque.com,thediscussion.site,latte.isnot.coffee,news.deghg.org,lemmy.primboard.de,baomi.tv,marginalcuriosity.net,lemmy.cloudsecurityofficehours.com,lemmy.game-files.net,lemmy.fedi.bub.org,lemmy.blue,lemmy.easfrq.live,narod.city,lemmy.ninja,lemmy.reckless.dev,nlemmy.nl,lemmy.mb-server.com,rammy.site,fedit.io,diggit.xyz,slatepacks.com,theotter.social,lemmy.nexus,kleptonix.com,rabbitea.rs,zapad.nstr.no,feddi.no based on the list of instances made by @[email protected] [https://lemm.ee/u/sunaurus] here [https://lemm.ee/post/177673?scrollToComments=true] - Thank you again for that work, it’s highly appreciated. This is a preventive measure against massive amounts of accounts being created for botting purposes. Most instances banned appear to be 1 user instances so we don’t think this will have a great effect on anyone’s usage of Beehaw. If you are an admin of one of those instances, feel free to contact us at [email protected] [[email protected]]

Got a link to this AMA? Couldn’t find it.

I agree with @[email protected], if modtools (one of the reasons for Reddit API protests in the first place) aren’t being prioritized, a hard fork of Lemmy will be inevitable. I know the Lemmy devs are known for being strangely hardheaded about certain issues.

They have shifted gears recently and been pretty receptive to this major critique. Things are going in a much better direction now that 2 months have passed. If I can find the AMA I will link you.
OP never delivered. :'(
Yeah, unfortunately took a rapid shift away and my optimism is gone. A hard fork is being made from scratch in a new programming language, that I am actively involved in whatever way I can be.
@[email protected] join wafrn is too young to be forked
The fact that some of you are putting the blame on instance owners/moderators is just showing that you have about the same amount of brain rot as the people actually posting this vile trash
Honestly, my first thoughts were that reddit had probably funded some blackhats to sabotage shit because they're still salty. Then, they could have it reported.
Honestly dude if you believe this is true you should speak with a therapist.
If you believe businesspeople never commit crimes to shut down their competition, you should read some history books. Antitrust violations, murders, aerial bombings—you name it, and if it’s illegal and gives a business an advantage over its competition, it’s happened.
Tulsa race massacre - Wikipedia

One solution, perhaps, is if Lemmy users were better able to overcome the inertia of moving Communities, Instances, accounts, etc. Essentially to be a moving target for anyone who might want to cause harm. DDoSing lemmy.world? Okay, but we’re all on lemmy2.world now. Spamming a Community? Oh, you mean that one we all left?

I’m not criticizing others, because I’m as guilty of it any anyone, but it might be better if we realized that our usernames are meaningless, there’s no Karma, our comment histories are full of ephemeral observations with only a very specific relevance. It wouldn’t really matter if - worst case scenario - everything was deleted. I realise this wouldn’t sound acceptable to new users, but since many of us on instances run by one person as a hobby, that might happen anyway.

(As I was typing this, someone just replied to a 17 days old comment I made, so maybe this is all rubbish)

Hey, good to see you as usual.

The issue here is more than illegal content gets propagated to every instance, so moving around doesn’t help that much in that regard, the issue would remain.

You too, of course.

But, no, it does nothing for after something like this that has already happened. It was just more of a pie-in-the-sky solution to it ever happening in the first place.