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

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨sunaurus@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨meta@lemm.ee⁩

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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Comments

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ScrollinMyDayAway@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is sick. Kudos to mods for dealing with this garbage. I hope the posters are all hunted down and punished.

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- DudePluto@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yeah, the admins deserve all our support on this. Not only to protect themselves as server owners, but to stop the spread. Hopefully a longterm solution will be found soon
  
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  - Pandantic@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Just like self-isolation when you have a cold - the healthy and wise thing to do.
    
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  - AeroLemming@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I didn’t like Apple’s idea of scanning private images for such imagery, but I think it would be a fantastic technology to use for social media. If they open sourced it, it could help Lemmy a lot.
    
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TheAndrewBrown@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I think this is a great move until we have something rock solid to prevent this. There are tons of image hosting sites you can use (most of which have the resources to already try to prevent this stuff) so it shouldn’t really cause much inconvenience.

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- hoodatninja@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Quality of posts will go up too. There’s a direct correlation with (worse) quality and image posts.
  
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  - Sotuanduso@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I prefer image memes, but to each their own.
    
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  - HelloHotel@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Images are grwat when used sparingly
    
    image here
    
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- expatriado@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  less strain on lemmy servers as well
  
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Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
We had to deal with something similar on lemmygrad a while ago. All power to you for destroying these annoying bastards.

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- Gacrux@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  they are more disgusting than annoying tbh
  
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  - Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    hear hear
    
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- kratoz29@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  How did you guys deal with this?
  
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  - Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    We doubled the amount of mods, and banned anything remotely resembling the things on-site. Sadly many times it had to be a brave lemmygrad to check it first and take the bullet for us to report it. I was one of those people on several occasions. I still cringe at the memories. It lasted a few months iirc.I haven’t seen whatever is hitting you guys, but our bots had some recognizable features, usually hiding their spam behind spoilers or links.
    
    It really was just a mobilization, lockdown, and purging everything that was suspicious until it stopped. That or they found a way to block those bots. I wasn’t in the command center by any means so the internal decisions I don’t know too much about.
    
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GarbageShoot@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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.

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- lemann@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  And I’m honestly sorry that people are blaming & attacking you guys 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 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)
  
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  - GarbageShoot@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
    off-topic
    I think if you asked a hexbear user to seriously answer how representative those screenshots are of lemm.ee, they’d probably say that lemm.ee is much more ideologically disjointed on a handful of issues, especially regarding history and geopolitics, and the screenshots are only representative of some of the more annoying tendencies among the neoliberals and poorly-educated “anarchists” (like that dude who decried “tankies” and used Sankara as a counterexample, when we all like Sankara). I also think they would be correct in saying this. I don’t know what the anti-HB people who don’t comment on our instance think, I hardly ever see it, but I can at least tell you that we know much more about neoliberal ideology than they do ML, because we almost all started out as de facto neoliberals and nearly none of them have even a basic understanding of ML theory (which is not really their fault, to be clear).
    
    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.
    
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  - usa_suxxx@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah, it’s kind of weird. Doesn’t whatever gets posted eventually get sent over to the other federated servers? Like every server saves a copy? Like the dumbest attack on another server would be this.
    
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Alaskaball@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
condolences for having to deal with this and full support of your actions.

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Ho_Chi_Chungus@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
My honest reaction to this:

[removed externally hosted image]

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- Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  bro they banned images did you not read the post lol
  
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  - RoomAndBored@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    [deleted]
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Cris_Color@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I know there are automated tools that exist for detection CSAM- given the challenges the fediverse has had with this issue it really feels like it’d be worthwhile for the folks developing platforms like lemmy and mastodon to start thinking about how to integrate those tools with their platforms to better support moderators and folks running instances.

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- Spaghetti_Hitchens@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I just shut down my instance because of this attack. Once there are better controls to prevent this, I will stand it back up.
  
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  - Cris_Color@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah, there was a gardening instance run by a great guy who just did the same
    
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  - IDontHavePantsOn@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    What do you think the purpose of these attacks are? The fediverse is so small in the grand scheme that I can only assume the worst.
    
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  - xusontha@ls.buckodr.ink ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Good thing my instance is only friends and friends of friends, otherwise I’d have to do the same
    
    What was your instance?
    
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- db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3920
  
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  - Cris_Color@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    That’s fucking dope, thank you very Mich for the link to the issue!
    
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  - HelloHotel@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Good, its an API that can fit diffrent tools even if one is promoted, linux part interchangability FTW.
    
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Mindfury@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
fucking disgusting, and I’m sorry you and your mods, admins and users were subjected to this

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BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I honestly think this is the reason why message boards generally don’t have the feature to attach images to posts anymore.

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- pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Large public message boards, anyway
  
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JakenVeina@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
No apologies necessary.

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IoSapsai@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is really sad and disgusting. It affects the whole platform but especially smaller instances that can’t keep up. Despite being a lemm.ee user, I was particularly upset about thegarden.land shutting down because of that spam. It had my favourite gardening community on here.

I really hope this gets sorted out, and the spammers end up where they belong.

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- Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Wait, they shut down? That’s sad, they were great
  
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- CARCOSA@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  😢
  
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- pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’d really love to start a small instance just to play host to a couple of niche interests I don’t see around yet, but yeah, hearing about this fucked to behavior is making me hold off.
  
  It has a real chilling affect on users, which is so unfortunate for a platform that is mostly made up of well meaning people
  
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iesou@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is why we can’t have nice things.

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- infinipurple@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Honestly, some people are just the worst. Why on earth anyone would waste their time doing something so vile is absolutely beyond me…
  
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  - HelloHotel@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    If one enjoys the twisted pain inflicted on children, then inflicting pain that makes most adults want to use eye-bleach by showing off their plunders well executed revenge.
    
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usa_suxxx@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Damn this sucks.

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randint@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It’s honestly sad that some well-intentioned laws can be used to attack online platforms.

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- GarbageShoot@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I mean, the nuclear option should be used here even if there wasn’t legal liability because that shit just shouldn’t be here.
  
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  - randint@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    that shit just shouldn’t be here
    
    Yes, I agree. Maybe my wording suggested otherwise. But my point was that it wouldn’t be the uploader that’s punished but the instance itself. That’s kinda weird.
    
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- Blamemeta@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I kinda wonder though, how would go about making a law against cp but doesn’t hurt small sites like lemm.ee?
  
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  - PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The issue is that you really can’t. The laws are written specifically to prevent plausible deniability. Because pedos would be able to go “lol a troll sent it to me” and create some doubt in a jury. Remember that (at least in America) the threshold for conviction is supposed to be “beyond a reasonable doubt.” So all the pedos would need to do is create reasonable doubt, by arguing that they never intended to view/own the CSAM.
    
    So instead, the laws are written to close that loophole. It doesn’t matter why you have the CSAM. All that matters is you have it. The feds/courts won’t give a fuck if it was due to you seeking it out or if it was due to a bad actor sending it to you.
    
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- hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Fuck the legal part, I wouldn’t want to stay on platform infested with cp. Thank you so much for all the awesome people combating this <3
  
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thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
its better to be safe, than to risk it with the spammers

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redballooon@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Did you alert authorities?

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- lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’m going to go out on a limb and say they and all the other instances that were hit with this attack probably did. Which authorities, I don’t know. If this instance is hosted in Estonia then probably Estonian authorities, but it’s probably being hosted on the cloud so is it REALLY hosted in Estonia? There are a ton of American and EU users so hopefully the FBI and whatever the EU equivalent is. But honestly cybercrimes can get confusing because of the nature of people and hosting being spread out all over the world and it can be hard to even figure out who to report to.
  
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  - infinipurple@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Europol in Europe. But you can report it to your national cybercrime division and they can refer it to the appropriate authority if necessary.
    
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- coffee@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I don’t think they made it onto the server, with the 100kb upload limit in place, that was already a rather low risk.
  
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Awoo@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
If you’re concerned about legal liability I think it’s worth noting that there is some protection for websites in this matter. For the most part as long as you’re taking “reasonable action” against it you’re not liable, and that most laws take into consideration the resources of the site dealing with the uploads.

Not pleasant for users though of course. And the speed at which its handled is obviously a concern.

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- GivingEuropeASpook@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s also still something that might need to be litigated in courts, which in and of itself is also a danger for people who can’t afford it.
  
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Anonymousllama@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Perfectly fine. People can upload images elsewhere and then just link to them. Most image upload sites will have all those protections in place already. A good stopgap until Lemmy gets those mod tools

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GenBlob@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
That’s fucking disgusting. Take any measures you can to prevent that shit from being on the site.

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- Officialuser@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  If you are looking for Microsoft Office, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook for your laptop/PC then this Link is for you. Download Link: Microsoft Official Link
  
  If you don’t believe, you can see our review and buy: “Review Chick Hare”
  
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  - ZodiacSF1969@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Lol first spam I’ve seen so far on lemmy
    
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M68040@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Gotta do what you gotta do. Here’s hoping the culprits get a swift boot.

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Sotuanduso@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Image

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- Sotuanduso@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  spoiler
  Don’t freak out. This image isn’t hosted on lemm.ee.
  
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  - HelloHotel@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Its a bug in sombodies markdown parsing.
    
    Your URL was HTML escaped.
    
    Correct
    
    …?width=640&height=480
    
    Incorrect
    
    …?width=640&height=480
    
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Holodeck_Moriarty@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This might be a good thread to ask:

Does anyone know if any of the Lemmy apps support direct imgur uploads for Lemmy?

I remember RIF used to do that for reddit back in the day before reddit supported direct image hosting.

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- PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Memmy on iOS uploads to Imgur by default. You just use the upload button.
  
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tacofox@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Thank you sir. I appreciate the dedication to the community to subject yourself to the moderation. Hopefully we can squash this before it goes too far, farther than it has anyway…

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Stamets@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m genuinely confused on why it’s even happening in the first place but I can’t say conspiracies aren’t spinning in my head. Stuff like Russia having troll attacks to try and stifle a new Internet trend. Or companies like Facebook and Twitter paying people to do this to instill a boogeyman like fear of federated Internet.

I’m not suggesting they’re true, but they’re one of many confused thoughts as to what’s goin on.

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- UnicodeHamSic@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It is an old 4chan thing. Thye have it around and they know it freaks our the nories so why not have some fun with it? So any kinda shit head chud or skrpit kiddie can do it for a little hit of fun vandalism. Being kicked off reddit for being too comunist does make us a likelytsrger for all thst.
  
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- redballooon@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  There’s no need to invoke conspiracy. This is entirely possible for a single person to do, and motivations for single people may be very pity even if the consequences are widely visible.
  
  One misguided teenager on a power trip who enjoys how much disruption he can cause is enough for such an effect.
  
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  - buffalobuffalo@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    yeah bitches be spending actual money to destroy a fifteen year old game with bots. it doesn’t need to have political motivation.
    
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- pleasemakesense@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’m like 80% sure this isn’t coming from the outside but from people on Lemmy from malicious instances
  
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ulu_mulu@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
That’s disgusting! You made the right thing, sorry you admins and mods have to put up with that shit, I hope instance owners that are being attacked are reporting it to local authorities.

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iByteABit@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is a very good decision, I worried about this problem from the very beginning that I learned about the Fediverse. Research must definitely be done to find CSAM detection tools that integrate into Lemmy, perhaps we could make a separate bridge repo that integrates a tool like that easily into the codebase.

I hope every disgusting creature that uploads that shit gets locked up

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- OverfedRaccoon@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  There was a user that posted a tool they had already been working on, that worked in Python, to go through and automate detection/deletion of potential CSAM on Lemmy servers that admins could implement until better tools come along. Unfortunately, I don’t remember who posted it or where I saw it in my travels yesterday.
  
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  - wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Google has an API for it. While I am not a fan of google, it is a widely used API.
    
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ComfortablyGlum@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Thank you for the efforts you are making. This is a serious situation; more than just dealing with bad actors, you are viewing traumatic images.

Please, for your sanity and well being, prioritize your self care. Things like this linger in the psyche much longer than you would expect.

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HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This sucks, but given the circumstances it’s sadly an understandable and necessary course of action.

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loboaureo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I think its necesary, no problem.

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- zoe@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  agreed
  
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