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.
Contact the FBI
This isn’t as crazy as it may sound either. I saw a similar situation, contacted them with the information I had, and the field agent was super nice/helpful and followed up multiple times with calls/updates.
This is good advice; I suspect they’re outside of the FBI’s jurisdiction, but they could also be random idiots, in which case they’re random idiots who are about to become registered sex offenders.
You might be surprised to discover that the USA does not believe their laws end at their borders. That is why Kim Dotcom was arrested by the FBI in NZ for violating US law.
In this case I doubt any LE agency abroad wouldn’t like the tip off.
Lemmy devs NEED to get mod tools out asap. Approved posts only, whitelisting users for communities, etc.
Honestly, as a moderator of a community this shit concerns me to no end. We desperately need more tools.
What kind of lowlife piece of shit do you need to be to post some shit like that? Some people will stoop to the most depraved levels just to fuck with strangers, it’s horrifying
This whole situation is shitty all around, I was really hoping it would be an isolated incident and that they wouldn’t come back. I think I speak for everyone when I say that the bastards posting CSAM need to be jailed or worse. Disagree with an instance or community all you want, the instant you pull something like this, you’ve lost every single argument and are irredeemably a horrible person not worthy of touching a computer ever again.
Once again pedophiles ruin everything nice. I know me saying this isn’t that helpful since I can’t do anything about it, but I’m sorry this is happening on your instance (and is getting federated to other instances). Don’t worry about inconvencing regular users, taking action against CSAM is far more important and any half amicable user will understand.
Some resources for reporting CSAM if you come across it anywhere (not just Lemmy):
US: https://www.missingkids.org/cybertipline
Canada: https://cybertip.ca/app/en/
International: https://www.inhope.org/
Last but not least, a reminder that if you accidentally load CSAM on your device, in most cases it will get cached to your storage because the majority of apps and browsers employ disk caching by default. You should at the very least clear your caches and then trim and fully wipe the free space on your device (maybe also directly shred the actual files if you can do that/know how to). Also know if you have any mandatory reporting laws where you live and comply with them. (EDIT: another commenter mentioned that in some jurisdictions you might actually not be allowed to delete them immediately and, presumably, have to contact police immediately reporting the active file on your device.) CYA to prevent yourself from getting screwed because of someone else’s horrible acts. Also, something I’ve been thinking about since this whole thing started: it might also be helpful to use a no-disk-cache browser/app (or disable disk caching on your current browser/app if you are able to) if you do wish to keep using Lemmy, at least until this whole thing blows over, that way you can just close the page/program and reboot your device, and the local version should be gone, especially since flash storage devices cannot be reliably wiped with the “fill the drive with blank data” method (not sure how big the risk of it ending up in the swapfile or otherwise sticking around though or at what point it stops counting as possession). Being exposed to CSAM is a nightmare for this reason and unfortunately there seem to be no good resources on what to do if you’re exposed.
I am not a lawyer and no part of this comment is legal advice.
Looks like Google has some tooling available that might help: https://protectingchildren.google/tools-for-partners
Probably other options too.
Wow, this is awful. Huge cudos to y’all for holding on through this. It’s obviously a deliberate attack on the fediverse by malicious actors.
I’ve actually never seen anything of this stuff so good job!
Saw that one post (unfortunately). How come people who spread content like that in the “open” internet (not darkweb) don’t get arrested?
I’m in the US and grew up here. My dad is a piece of shit pedophile who exploited me for several websites. None on darkweb but at the time, they didn’t really need to be.
Word got out and cops came to interrogate ME the person who was the victim in this situation. They also blamed me for what was going on (how? I don’t know, I was a teen who was being exploited underage but cops gonna cop) and they basically intimidated me into dropping out of school and taking the blame for my dad because the other option was that I be sent to a home as an orphan.
My dad got away with a slap on the wrist basically because cops in the US don’t do their job. They even cover for people. I ended up literally running away from home.
I think the issue is that people see this topic as all outrage - I mean, look at the comments here. Everyone is so mad they can’t even think straight. And I’m personally noticing that some of the outrage doesn’t even seem to be directed at the right people. Like everyone is super willing to shit on pedos left and right but I wonder if they would be willing to listen to someone who has been knee deep in this shit before and were innocent because they were being exploited by a pedophile.
Like a lot of comments say “disgusting” but then don’t say anything about how the person that it happened to must feel. Everyone’s upset they saw something but they don’t seem to be upset about who they saw it happening to.
Like I wonder who they think hurts more in this situation. The person who was made into a victim or the people who just saw it happen.
Fuck these trolls
That’s not a troll, CSAM goes well beyond trolling, pedophile would be a more accurate term for them.
Yeah. A troll might post something like a ton of oversized images of pig buttholes. Who the fuck even has access to CSAM to post? That’s something you only have on hand if you’re a predator already. Nor is it something you can shrug off like “lol I was only trolling”. It’s a crime that will send you to jail for years. It’s a major crime that gets entire police units dedicated to it. It’s a huuuuge deal and I cannot even fathom what kind of person would risk years in prison to sabotage an internet forum.
troll is too mild of an adjective for these people
Yeah, this isn’t just joking or shitposting. This is the kind of shit that gets people locked up in federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison for decades. The feds don’t care if you sought out the CSAM, because it still exists on your device regardless of intent.
The laws about possessing CSAM are written in a way that any plausible deniability is removed, specifically to prevent pedophiles from being able to go “oh lol a buddy sent that to me as a joke” and getting acquitted. The courts don’t care why you have CSAM on your server. All they care about is the fact that you do. And since you own the server, you own the CSAM and they’ll prosecute you for it.
How about “pedophile”? I mean, they had to have the images to post them.
