Image uploads are now disabled on lemm.ee due to malicious users

Sorry for the short post, I'm not able to make it nice with full context at the moment, but I want to quickly get this announcement out to prevent confusion:

Unfortunately, people are uploading child sexual abuse images on some instances (apparently as a form of attack against Lemmy). I am taking some steps to prevent such content from making it onto lemm.ee servers. As one preventative measure, I am disabling all image uploads on lemm.ee until further notice - this is to ensure that lemm.ee can not be used as gateway to spread CSAM into the network.

It will not possible to upload any new avatars or banners while this limit is in effect.

I'm really sorry for the disruption, it's a necessary trade-off for now until we figure out the way forward.

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219 comments

I'm sorry that you and the people on this instance are being subjected to that shit. It's always despicable but on top of that it just seems absurd to target lemm.ee -- a deliberately unprofitable platform -- with such illegal means.
- And I'm honestly sorry that people are blaming & attacking you and various other Hexbear users for no tangible reason.
  I'm surprised people have forgotten already about the attacks against lemmy.world, assumedly executed by a disgruntled ex-moderator long before we ever knew Hexbear existed.
  Instead people are jumping to "OhH it's ThE HexBeArS" when they have not been able to freely browse HB discussions or even talk with you, they're just shown the worst take from a minority (although tbf HB does the same on c/cth, so it's kinda funny seeing both sides with one not realising the other is also just a human too, just with differing culture and political stance)
  Edit: replaced "guys" with a more neutral term
  
  Thankfully I haven't seen the takes accusing HB of the recent attacks, though being accused of the attacks on .world was a little annoying. I appreciate the solidarity.
  I genuinely have no idea where this recent attack is coming from. The most fried part of my brain says "One of the big companies trying to absorb the fediverse is doing this to undermine their competition," but I have zero evidence, it's just the only motive I can even think of beyond it being a rogue crank.
  It's totally conceivable that HB people would spam an instance they don't like -- though this would be against the wishes of the mods and admins -- but our site culture is completely antithetical to spamming CSAM and things like that, so I don't think even a rogue group of users would do it "on our behalf".
  Oh, I just realized it could be one of those fash instances like exploding heads. If any were defeded relatively recently, that would make sense.
  Instead people are jumping to "OhH it's ThE HexBeArS" when they have not been able to freely browse you guys' discussions or even talk with you, they're just shown the worst take from a minority (although tbf you guys do the same on c/cth, so it's kinda funny seeing both sides with one not realising the other is also just a human too, just with differing culture and political stance)
  I don't think I have much to contribute to the "both sides" thing that is useful, but I'm going to talk anyway because I'm thinking about it now.
  
  Anyone on any instance federated with hexbear is welcome to post questions to c/askchapo. If they are relatively polite and not presumptuous, we'll be happy to answer. If people are still mean, report it. You can let me know and I will personally nag the mods to address the matter properly. Just recently we had a thread from a .ml user who wanted us to state our opinion on Trump for the record for the hundredth time, so about a hundred users chimed in that they all hate his guts (I also made a comment to that effect). We're happy to discuss things openly and it would be good for us to improve community relations to avoid things like one group accusing the other of doing something as heinous as what the OP describes.
  
  trump
  To be fair, some of the rhetoric you all use makes your political compass difficult to navigate.
  
  As I said, the question is welcome no matter how tedious I might personally find it, just like any question asked in good faith.
  Complete aside: polcomp is a bad way of attempting to understand politics. It has no way of understanding Marxism.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=9nPVkpWMH9k
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  This is a cool bot!
  
  That video could have easily been 5 minutes. Phweew.
  Say something bad about communism.
  
  Everyone should be able to point out flaws in a system, as no system is perfect. Not even communism. So, point out the flaws in communism, in plain English.
  
  Sure, heres some intro-level crit.
  Marx was completely off base with his prediction revolution would arise from urban proleitaritized factory workers and intelligentsia in "developed" nations.
  Historically, the majority of revolutions have come from rural agricultural workers in the most exploited colonial holdings.
  Luckily, communist political theory didn't end with Marx.
  
  What country has been a good example of communism working?
  Edit: TLDR; China, Cuba, Vietnam. None of which I’d consider great places to live, or particularly in line with Socialism.
  What I did learn is, hexbears like to team up for the kill, but trip all over themselves and land on their own… claws? Hilarity.
  For the record, I’m a socialist, just not a troll.
  
  In almost every single country it has been deployed in socialism provides a better physical quality of life when compared with capitalism at the same level of development.
  
  political compass
  Anyone that uses this to navigate politics is themselves politically illiterate.
  
  Ahhh yes, someone who cannot read between the lines to understand the true meaning. Thank you for this wonderful example.
  
  "I'm scared of having my political illiteracy exposed and dunked on so I only ever write intentionally vague responses."
  
  I felt it was pretty understandable. We can have a nice conversation, or we can stop. Up to you.
  
  Say something that isn't vague and useless then.
  
  Kill the rich.
  
  Which ones? There are plenty of rich working class people that I consider comrades. The issue we socialists have isn't income, the issue is class, which is quite different.
  Your class is determined not by your income but by how you receive your income. A working class person makes their income by selling their labour to a member of the bourgeoisie (capital-owner), whereas a member of the bourgeoisie makes their income by stealing the surplus labour from a member of the working class.
  There are working class people that can make quite a bit of money. Athletes and actors for example. Although in many cases once people make that kind of money they also become members of the bourgeoisie by investing it in passive income such as landlording or stocks, that is not true of all of them and is very much something that should not be assumed.
  As for killing the bourgeoisie, I am in favour of simply phasing them out. Although I am not naive enough to think that they will just allow that to happen without trying to kill every last one of us first to prevent it, and believe in the need for us to be prepared for violent action when they do turn to that option. It is not an act that I think should be advocated for by itself, other than with some hefty layers of irony as a means of generally promoting militancy.
  
  Its really not complicated.
  Just communist/anarchist/far more left than normal western discourse with a large amount of cynicism.
  
  CSAM sourcing?
  Where do these people get that much CSAM. somebody once said that to the best of their understanding, it was new CSAM images each time, meaning not many repeats. My collection of reddit memes costs me ~15-30GB, all of sbubby costs ~5GB. where is it pooled from?
  The most fried part of my brain says "One of the big companies trying to absorb the fediverse is doing this to undermine their competition," but I have zero evidence
  Most companies that build CSAM detectors, by nature of their work, have a lot of it. likely thousands of photos and videos were willingly handed over to put into some vault to fight against it's existance. If its a large corperation attacking is, it nesisarly means a leak from a CSAM vault wether it was intentional (an authorized attack) or not (opsec mistakes or insiders). Or it means there was no vault (negligence) or it wasnt tranfered securely (opsec mistakes).
  it's just the only motive I can even think of beyond it being a rogue crank.
  Its not hard to build a bot that scrapes a webpage of its images, they can easly aggrogate that much content over decades.

219 comments

CSAM sourcing?