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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[–] utopianfiat@lemmy.world 109 points 1 year ago (54 children)

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.

[–] systemglitch@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

It doesn't bode well.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Lemmy is new for all of us. I don't see any other solution right now. You got some ideas how to handle it better?

I think better mod tools are needed but it will take time. Doesn't mean the platform will die, but means we may have to deal with some stuff like this.

[–] utopianfiat@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a hard problem but it absolutely is an existential risk. Spam is an existential risk. A platform that collapses under spam will either remain too small to be irrelevant or collapse from unusability. I'm sorry but I don't think your response completely grasps the number of forums, social media sites, wikis, etc. that have been completely crushed by spam.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 4 points 1 year ago

I admit I haven't kept track of that, true.

[–] SamboT@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Solution now. Better solution later.

[–] utopianfiat@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

That's what I'm hoping - we can't just burn down any community with spam

[–] dipshit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’ve just finished arguing with other lemmy users about how admins aren’t interested in taking on your legal risk. That was for the topic of piracy. CSAM is another issue entirely. Not only can lemmy users not expect to see a CSAM-friendly instance, lemmy users should expect to be deanonymized by law enforcement. Fuck around with kids and find out.

Downvote this message if you are a pedophile, as I’m taking the stance that CSAM should not be allowed on lemmy servers.

[–] utopianfiat@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you seriously conflating my position with arguing that CSAM should be allowed?

[–] dipshit@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Are people having a difficult time reading today? It’s not just you. Maybe it’s this topic and how it intermeshes with technology. Some people seem to think that there’s a technical solution for this already (one that works as well if not better than human moderators).

No, I don’t think you personally are advocating for CSAM to be allowed. I think commenters are getting a little uppity about missing out on their favorite community while the admins deal with content that is:

harmful to children
damaging to the admin’s psyche
damaging to the user’s psyche
against the law

Imagine you owned an instance, and you found 100 moderators for your communities. You rest your head on the pillow and go to sleep. You wake up and find that some user has written a script to post CSAM on all your communities, because “fuck you that’s why”. You get on the line with your moderators and they tell you they’ve been battling this all night, just banning people and deleting comments on site. They tell you they’ve had to turn off a few communities and that some users are complaining. Your hard work for weeks and months to get this instance to a healthy place is being tested. You get an email from your hosting service, saying that they have reports that your site contains CSAM and that’s against ToS - they give you a day to get it under control before they boot your server or turn it over to police. Imagine in this case you make the drastic move to simply pull the plug - taking the entire instance offline until you can sort it through. Now imagine some users come in and start complaining about how you dear admin are killing the fediverse. Personally, I have no sympathy for those user who complain about their community or instance being taken offline while admins deal with real shit.

[–] utopianfiat@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think commenters are getting a little uppity

What praytell the fuck do you mean by this term specifically

[–] dipshit@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I’ve spent the better part of this morning explaining to people the fact that a community needs to be shut down in order for volunteers to work on cleaning it up in the time they have available.

commenters seem to be pretty upset that something as “drastic” as turning off a community needs to be done. Some commenters have gone so far as to say that the policy of turning off communities in response to handling CSAM is what will “kill the fediverse”.

I think the normal response to this is: “Wow, this sucks. Thanks admins for doing your best work. I understand the community make not come back for a bit, take all the time you need!”. Yet, I hear “it’s the dev’s fault for not putting in the code for blocking CSAM and taking a community offline is unacceptable”. I call that “upity” but there’s probably better words for it.

[–] cubedsteaks@lemmy.today 3 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Maybe it’s this topic and how it intermeshes with technology. Some people seem to think that there’s a technical solution for this already (one that works as well if not better than human moderators).

So 4chan has this problem a lot but they are also based in the US where its most definitely illegal and they IP ban people and I think for the most part it works. It did suck though - I don't go on there anymore but in the last few years I did, if I was on mobile, I would often get hit with a region ban because so many people in that area were banned that they just decided to block an entire IP region to prevent anyone else posting illegal content.

maybe look into IP and region banning to prevent someone from just making new accounts.

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[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think the comment above was trying to express dissatisfaction towards Lemmy's hosts for failure to respond. They're simply stating that the way things are all set up, much as we might like it, has serious problems - ones that may end up being considered unsolvable. As you said, we might be heading for an eventual plug pull.

It's like pointing out that cars produce fossil fuel exhaust. It sucks, and we're seeing it as unsustainable, but there's no convenient alternative yet.

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