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Lemmyshitpost community closed until further notice (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lwadmin@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] dragontamer@lemmy.world 149 points 1 year ago

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?

[-] TsarVul@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Couldn't one small change in the picture change the whole hash?

[-] TsarVul@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Lmaydev@programming.dev 10 points 1 year ago

Honestly I'd rather that than see shit like this any day.

[-] Serinus@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] what_is_a_name@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] TsarVul@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

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.