Fuck these trolls

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.

Contact the FBI

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Be aware of the signs of CSAM, such as children being secretive or withdrawn, or having changes in their behavior.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.

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?

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."

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.

Please get some legal advice, this is so fucked up.

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?

Is it possible to (at least temporarily):

1. Turn off instance image hosting (disable pictrs)
2. Disallow image and video posts across all communities
3. 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.

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

Thank you so much for all of the effort and time all of you are putting into this situation. Having to deal with bad actors is one thing, but you are now dealing with images that are traumatizing to view.

Please, for your sanity and overall well being, PLEASE take care of yourself. Yes, it sucks about having to close !lemmyshitpost, but self-care and support are of the utmost importance.

I assume you've contacted the FBI, but if not PLEASE DO.

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.

Thank you for your work to keep that despicable trash out of our feeds. Sorry you have to deal with it. Fuck those losers.

Thank you for all your work. It sucks that there are people who would do shit like this. Please don't forget to take care of yourselves as well.

Who the fuck has such a problem with this instance?

Looks like Google has some tooling available that might help: https://protectingchildren.google/tools-for-partners

Probably other options too.