1y ago

LemmyWorld forced to close shitposting community due to CSAM spammers

lemmy.world Lemmyshitpost community closed until further notice - Lemmy.World

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 k...

They also shut down registration

Whoever is spamming CP deserves the woodchipper

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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.
  https://lemm.ee/comment/2872722
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  Nothing cares whether you present yourself as being nice or not. Information has no feelings.
  But the Lemmy devs clearly pushed that responsibility downstream under the contractual terms of using the software. Maybe that made the agreement a bad deal, but nobody else had to ever agree to the bad terms. It seems you did agree to it. Why?
  What the contract also allowed, however, was the ability for you to modify the software as you see fit. That part is a good deal. It seems the solution is staring you right in the face. Since you're already committed, why spend your typing here and not in your favourite code editor?
  
  They also get funding from a dutch organisation
  
  your name is geert so i trust this unquestioningly
  
  850/day? That's crack smoking money. Where do I sign up for this?!
  For the record that's sarcasm and the comment is bullshit. The average salary for a developer in the USA is 140,000$, https://www.salary.com/research/salary/listing/senior-software-developer-salary
  The comment's math would mean developers are making roughly 306,000/year. More than double the actual average.
  In fairness, 392.03 a week averages out to 18,817.44 which is also not in that range.
  
  The comment’s math would mean developers are making roughly 306,000/year.
  Yes, developers at places like Google are making that much. Not the average developer, but nobody said the average developer.
  
  Correct no one did, you however said "lots of developers" even if you added up all of developers at the FAANG companies you still would not have an appreciable percentage of the developers in the US workforce let alone the world. So no. Not lots of developers. A very small few. Truthfully probably even fewer than that because not even Google wants to pay 300k per developer only to qualified/experienced developers.
  
  if you added up all of developers at the FAANG companies you still would not have an appreciable percentage of the developers in the US workforce let alone the world.
  Hmm. I've never taken "lots" to be a proportional term before. The dictionary uses "a lot of people at the gala last night" as an example of how "lots" is often used.
  What kind of gala is attended by an appreciable percentage of the world's population? Words can mean whatever want them to mean, of course, but in terms of common usage, surely it implies something like hundreds of people at best?
  
  850 X 5 X 52 = 221,000.
  Strange to add weekends into your maths.
  
  I did 850 x 30 x 12 usual salary math. But I was also sleep deprived so perhaps not the best choice.
  
  https://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.
  https://jacobtomlinson.dev/posts/2022/dont-be-that-open-source-user-dont-be-me/
  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.
  
  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.
  
  nobody's safety is in jeopardy
  You know, except for those abuse victims whose pictures are being spread around lemmy. Just sayin'
  
  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? Are you worried that you're a closeted pedophile that will be ready to shower those who record such content to see more and more as soon as you get your first taste?
  
  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.
  
  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?
  
  That's part of the trolling though, yeah? Thay make the devs, admins and mods feel unappreciated so that they quit. This is a systematic take down of lemmy from all sides.
  
  Absolutely. It's already worked on some instances as well. It's upsetting.
- Why?
  
  Because Lemmy is free and provided as is, nobody is obligated to do shit.
  It would have been different if they simply pointed this out, but they specifically aimed this at the two people doing a ton of work for free making it available for everyone. That's simply rude and ungrateful, in my opinion.
  
  Nah man, if you're building an online platform made to share content there's no excuse to lack at least basic moderation capabilities especially when it comes to this type of illegal and seriously fucked up content. It isn't the early 00s, we know how important this shit is by now. If mod tools don't make their way to the top of the dev's backlog after this I don't think I'm staying on Lemmy.
  
  I don’t think I’m staying on Lemmy.
  As bad as it sounds, I was thinking about it too. The risk of something similar happening again is just too high to be ignored.
  What I could imagine is a temporary hold on federation (to prevent the propagation of CSAM content), and instances organizing in small clusters of trust, waiting for sufficient tools, be it mod tools, CSAM scanning or whatever, so that there can be federation again.
  
  It would totally suck for self hosting, but yeah I don't see a way around it at this point. Maybe allow federation on a selective basis?
  
  Yes, that's what I meant with small clusters based on trust

143 comments