Pawoo, a Japanese Mastadon instance on the Fediverse notoriously bad about moderating CSAM, has been taken down.

Hal-5700X@lemmy.world to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 238 points –
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Speaking from experience, they could fix their spam and abuse woes very easily by just closing new signups or restricting it in some way. Simplest would be invite-only (built-in feature of Mastodon), or restrict the signups page based on IP range whitelist/blacklist.

EDIT: Their domain has been reinstated, and they disabled open signups. New registrations now require moderator approval https://pawoo.net/@pawoo_support/111249170584706318

:pawoo: Announcement! Thank you for always using Pawoo. Due to server congestion, new registrations will now require approval by a moderator. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

you mean they should turn off the user-count-go-uppinator? but how would the fediverse grow like that?? /s

(sorry i just have opinions on large instances)

The nature of a site like reddit (and lemmy and all other alternatives) means a large userbase is necessary. Not at the expense of CSAM, but also everyone trying to gatekeep lemmy doesn't realise that we'll die a slow death unless the fediverse grows by at least 10-20x.

Doesn't have to be all on one instance though. Instances shouldn't grow beyond what they can admin/moderate

I swear, Lemmy users act like they are completely in favor of an instance of 40 users and a submission every other week. Seeing scale as inherently bad.

Lemmy will fucking roll over and die within the year.

I’m pretty sure they were complicit in this and were not really trying to fight it.

Actual CSAM on pawoo wasn't even a problem. It was just spam from feds or scammers.

Absolutely brain-dead speculation based on literally nothing. Complicit in what??? The current owner is a very public figure, so they gain nothing and have everything to lose. It's just pure incompetence and mismanagement.

Why are there people downvoting people commenting about not wanting CSAM?

What does the acronym CSA mean? I'm not native English.

CSAM is Child Sexual Exploitation Material

People prefer using this term over CP because the word "porn" is considered too soft. Porn is generally a consensual, adult medium made with adults for adults. CP is not that, it's first and foremost harm of a child.

Another reason is that "CP" got jokingly coopted by abusers in the form of various dogwhistles (e.g.: "cheese pizza"). It made more sense to adopt a new acronym rather than try to uphold any sense of decorum while sharing ownership of the term w/ edgelords & predators.

I mean it's more accurate and unambiguous. Definitely preferable overall IMO.

That's strange to me, because Child Porn sounds revolting to me but CSAM sounds like something I can treat with aspirin.

CSAM is a pretty sterile term so I can see where that feeling comes from.

Japan is very lax over pedophillia.

Nah. They're lax about loli. Which, as distasteful as it is, does not involve any harm to actual children. They do go after actual CSAM.

Not really, they’re lax about CSAM and didn’t even have laws until 2016-2017. Even then the laws are lax

They go after it mainly to appease external forces like other countries objecting to it, but people who are convicted often get very light sentences.