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.
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
Lads, as a casual Lemmy user, just how much danger am I in of having my mind permanently incinerated by seeing images of children being sexually tortured? I’ve been using the net since the mid-90s and I have never seen a single piece of CSAM in that time, and I now realise that I’ve been insanely lucky in that regard. My mind is already host to all manner of unspeakable internet shit (looking at you, cartels), but I don’t think I could endure seeing anything like the stuff those evil fucking degenerate nihilist cunts have on their hard drives. I would want to commit murder.
So, stay the hell off Lemmy or… ?
Look I unfortunately ran into one of these pieces of content, and I think it will stay with me forever. I think it’s because I sort by “New” in order to try and help promote the good undiscovered content. As long as you focus on Hot/Active, I think you’ll be fine.
I’d avoid hot. Unlike Reddit’s sort of the same name, Lemmy’s hot gives a lot of weight to brand new posts. I regularly saw lots of posts with no votes when I used it. Active or top is probably safer. Though admittedly, if someone is using bots to post content, they could use bots to upvote, too. Lemmy has pretty much nothing to prevent even basic botting. The way federation works is actually way worse for the ability to prevent bots, because bots just need any insecure instance and can spin up their own instance in minutes if they can’t find an existing insecure one (at the cost of burning a domain).
I think I saw someone mention this before. Apparently hot sorts by the hottest posts of the communities. So if there’s a brand new community its first post will be at the top of hot because its the hottest post that community has had.
I just read another comment saying that posts were showing up in hot / active somehow despite being heavily downvoted. It wouldn’t surprise me TBH. Hot / active always seems to be buggy.
It’s not a bug, it’s just lack of content. You can downvote that shit, but if there’s no other content to stack “on top” of it, well, it can’t go any lower.
Sorry for your troubles :( that’s shit
From my experience, using “new” is dangerous on any platform. I’ve seen so many cursed thumbnails on youtube…
Sorry to hear that…
I’m kind of the same in regards to this bullshit. Of all the crazy shit I’ve seen during my time on the web; I have never crossed any CSAM. Am I lucky?.. probably yes. But is someone(s) being fucking trash and deserves a slow horrible dismemberment, like I’ve seen online before… I also say yes
They’re trolling with that shit, which means they can find that shit (which I haven’t come across in my almost 30 years of interwebs use)… and I don’t give a shit about “the point” they’re trying to troll; because they’re contributing to it, at the end of the day. They think they’re fucking HaXzOR fuckwits, that found an easy way to cause turmoil?
Welcome. To. The. Fucking. Internet.
Keep that shit up, and they’re gonna get got. It’s low effort, beyond fucking despicable, and they deserve to rot for even entertaining that approach. And they SHOULD be fucking scared; cause they’re on everyone’s radar, and I can promise you that they’re not as fucking smart as they think
It means to me that they’re fucking dumb, (beyond) degenerate, and that they WILL get absolutely fucked by the majority, if they don’t slink back to their fucking gutter… and quick. I can promise you that people who give a shit about it and can do something… they’re already hunting them down. It’s like the type of person that thinks “swatting” people is “LoLz”, until they end up in “pound me up the ass” federal-fucking-prison, because they can’t conceive the fact that they’re not the only one(s) who know how to “use the interwebs”
Fuck around, piss off the right people, and find the fuck out. Think governments don’t have the resources to find your ass, when enough reports have been made? Their days are fucking numbered in my eyes, if they don’t backstep… but they’ve already opened a door to be found, so good fucking luck.
So, will I stay the hell off Lemmy? Nah. Just don’t sort “by new” for now, until they inevitably get cornered. And they better pray they get cornered by the authorities and not by someone(s) who’s got the time to ruin every inch of their being.
Fuck terrorists. And fuck them. Any shit I see is going straight to the proper authority; and the authorities aren’t dumb. And with enough reports?.. they’re gonna go for the source, not the unwilling bystander(s).
This is a feeble attempt at division and fear. Fuck fear… and good luck. Best hope they don’t get caught by the hands of someone who’s better. They’re “playing an ace” when they don’t know a god damn thing about cards
Don’t sort by new for now; I don’t wanna see that shit either. But I’ll be damned if I scroll on by (if I do see one) without helping the hammer get slammed down on them. Just a matter of time for those little bitches, if they wanna keep playing with fire.
Fuck them, they should be scared. I’m good here.
And I’ve got time. Fuck it, I’ll make time just to watch them burn. I’ve dealt with enough bullshit in my life, that I have the energy to contribute to any small bits that I can.
They should be the ones cowering; not us. They made the mistake and I hope they reap what they sow
Same as you. I have avoided it this far. I think Imma back up for a little while. I cannot, cannot see that shit.
I’ll just go outside and read a book.
Unless they use vote manipulation
If they could, they would have used that already
I wonder if “they” is just one person or entity.
Highly likely. Someone is mad about something.
It’s an unusual vulnerability. Highly successful. No technical expertise required. No resources required. Rapidly propagating. Infects users & hosters alike. Real world consequences for infected.
Some level of technical expertise is required or they’re going to prison. The Lemmy web server logs are all there. Email address associated with sign up is there. IP address used to create the email address is logged and so on.
Let’s hope they get caught and convicted for this shit.
deleted by creator
I’m gone for a few days and some assholes trying to fuck up this instance. Smh.
Correction, fkd the instance
That is awful.
These bad actors are wierd, most who spread CSAM dont want to be known about by the masses, these posts are implied to be attempting to be visible as their posting in a well known community. It feels Sus.
Keep up the good work keeping us safe, keep your therapist and/or support network in the loop about this so they can catch you if you fall.
they forget about 4chan
I mean, this is just pulling out the old Reddit playbook.
AHS was known for mass posting CSAM on subreddits that they wanted to be banned by the admins.
Bit different here, but the principle of killing the place is there. CSAM spammed on L.W -> CSAM spreads to other instances because federation and sync -> other instances obviously don’t want CSAM on them and defederate from L.W -> L.W dies because nobody is federated with them
This was my first thought as well. I hate that being so cynical is my reaction now, but this is just DDOS by another method. The point is to make the platform unusable so people will go somewhere else. CSAM is just the weapon. It’s doubly vile because it’s just going to become ammunition in the war against federation altogether. The stakes are high enough that the institutional players have plenty of cash, no ethics, and no accountability, and I wouldn’t at all put it past any social media alternative to employ these kinds of tactics to kill the fediverse before it can gain a foothold. And (at the risk of getting too conspiratorial) that’s not even considering governments and ordinary black hats.
AHS? American Home Shield? American Horror Story?
Anti Hate Subreddits
I do think if the platform needs to grow more, we need more full time devs working on it and building it up to par. Good time to start funding campaign for Lemmy
They actually are (were?) already funded by NLNet
https://nlnet.nl/project/Lemmy/
Also a situation where avoiding “New” helps, since no one is up-voting that BS.
I don’t know if it has been mentioned there yet but do you think it would be a good idea to post this to the lemmy incidents room on Matrix?
What stops them from posting across other instances? I’m surprised they spam stuff in that specific instance instead of all over.
WTH is wrong with people?
Ya’ll are going through one of the worst situations I could imagine, but I’m confident you will figure it out and come out better for it. Keep your heads up. (P.S. - Sorry about the scat, lol)
4chan.mov
Saw that one post (unfortunately). How come people who spread content like that in the “open” internet (not darkweb) don’t get arrested?
Usually they do, eventually (even on the darkweb).
Though it does take time to pin them down sometimes because many criminals take steps to hide their identities and make it very difficult.
Lots of people though are caught easily and quickly, hopefully these guys will be like that and will get caught quickly and put away for good.
Darkweb as a proxy to the clear web. Its a ligitimate tool used for horriffic things somtimes. Tor is a huge double edge sword.
If these people were distrobuting, the most open stratigy would hide in plain sight. Like say the dark corners of some well known mainstream, but negligent social media site. These people are here to terrorize.
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.
First, thank you for your comment and I’m glad you posted it.
Second, I want to take a moment to clarify what people mean when they say “disgusting” - at least for me - it’s not a matter of “oh my god I saw something awful, my day is ruined, that’s disgusting”, it’s instead “oh my god I can’t believe that happened, that’s disgusting”. The nuance is that the “disgust” is against the people who allowed it to happen - The perpetrators, the cops who did nothing, the people who shared it, and the world that allowed it to happen.
Again, thank you for sharing your story, it’s a great reminder of what the actual issue at hand is. Much love!
I’m sorry for your experience and I hope you’re doing better now. It’s very important to note that the major victims in this “attack” are absolutely the abused children. That’s exactly what makes this the most disgusting attack on Lemmy to date.
Just had like 90 (probably unrelated) arrests in one state in Germany. There are just way too man to arrest them all.
I hardly know anything about the subject of the dark web, but my take is, they operate from the dark web. They open temporary email accounts, then free computing or free hosting accounts, or are part of a bot net. The rest is relatively easy.
Law enforcement monitors the dark web, though, so if they make a stupid move (and they will), they will eventually get caught.
God I hope they get caught.
They would need to be reported with some credible and actionable evidence to the appropriate authorities. Just having the material they are posting isn’t enough. If they are taking precautions, it’s gonna be hard to figure out who and where they are from what the site would be able to log while they use it.
The legal system also takes time. The material could be disseminated fairly widely before an investigation would be started and completed. Especially with bots. Hundreds of bots are a lot faster than a team of humans.
GET OUT THE 4CHAN
I’m closing on a home. Timing is convenient for me. Can we keep it closed until I finish closing? Both are something I’m stressed about and looking forward to.
I can make it better news if things go right. I’m anxious.
I had no idea that this was going on. I expect that, like me, most people are horrified.
