Recently posts that go against our ToS policies and ethics

lwadmin@lemmy.worldmod to Lemmy.World Announcements@lemmy.world – 134 points –

Dear Lemmy.world Community,

Recently posts were made to the AskLemmy community that go against not just our own policies but the basic ethics and morals of humanity as a whole. We acknowledge the gravity of the situation and the impact it may have had on our users. We want to assure you that we take this matter seriously and are committed to making significant improvements to prevent such incidents in the future. Considering I'm reluctant to say exactly what these horrific and repugnant images were, I'm sure you can probably guess what we've had to deal with and what some of our users unfortunately had to see. I'll add the thing we're talking about in spoilers to the end of the post to spare the hearts and minds of those who don't know.

Our foremost priority is the safety and well-being of our community members. We understand the need for a swift and effective response to inappropriate content, and we recognize that our current systems, protocols and policies were not adequate. We are immediately taking immediate steps to strengthen our moderation and administrative teams, implementing additional tools, and building enhanced pathways to ensure a more robust and proactive approach to content moderation. Not to mention ensuring ways that these reports are seen more quickly and succinctly by mod and admin teams.

The first step will be limiting the image hosting sites that Lemmy.world will allow. We understand that this can cause frustration for some of our users but we also hope that you can understand the gravity of the situation and why we find it necessary. Not just to protect all of our users from seeing this but also to protect ourselves as a site. That being said we would like input in what image sites we will be whitelisting. While we run a filter over all images uploaded to Lemmy.world itself, this same filter doesn't apply to other sites which leads to the necessity of us having to whitelist sites.

This is a community made by all of us, not just by the admins. Which leads to the second step. We will be looking for more moderators and community members that live in more diverse time zones. We recognize that at the moment it's relatively heavily based between Europe and North America and want to strengthen other time zones to limit any delays as much as humanly possible in the future.

We understand that trust is essential, especially when dealing with something as awful as this, and we appreciate your patience as we work diligently to rectify this situation. Our goal is to create an environment where all users feel secure and respected and more importantly safe. Your feedback is crucial to us, and we encourage you to continue sharing your thoughts and concerns.

Every moment is an opportunity to learn and build, even the darkest ones.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Lemmy.world Administration

Legal / ToS

::: spoiler spoiler CSAM

:::

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Thanks admins, for taking this seriously.

Take care of yourselves as well. The images sound horrific.

What is the complete correct response for users to carry out if they spot CP?

Is just the report button on the post good enough? Is there some kind of higher level report for bigger-than-just-one-instance shit that threatens Lemmy as a whole? Should we call the FBI or some shit?

I haven't come across any here, but if I do, I'd like to be able to aid in swift action against not only the post/account in question, but against the actual person running it.

In theory, reporting to the community moderators should be enough for users. It would then be the responsibility of thost moderators to report it to the instance admin, and then the admins responsibility to report it to the instance's local law enforcement. They will then handle it appropriately.

However, sometimes community moderators are corrupt and will ignore reports and even ban users for reporting instance rule breaking content. In those cases, the user must report directly to the instance admin. As you can imagine, instance admins also can be corrupt and therefore the user must report to law enforcement.

But typically the first scenario is sufficient.

FYI: admins can see all reports. We currently have a tool running that scans for posts that are reported a lot, which will then notify people who can do something about it.

You can always report casm to the FBI. You don't need a mod's guidance to do so.

Otherwise report and block.

Report and block should be a correct respond.

Edit: actually also report the user to the instance admin where the user from.

Well thanks for the spoiler thing, but I don't even know what the acronym (is it even an acronym?) means anyway and now I'm too afraid to do a web search for it 😅

Well, maybe it's better that way.

It's safe to look things up!

Looking up the name of a crime does not mean that you're doing that crime.

If you look up "bank robbery" that doesn't make you guilty of bank robbery. It doesn't even mean you're trying to rob a bank, or even want to rob a bank. You could want to know how bank robbers work. You could be interested in being a bank guard or security engineer. You could be thinking of writing a heist story. You could want to know how safe your money is in a bank: do they get robbed all the time, or not?

Please, folks, don't be afraid to look up words. That's how you learn stuff.

Thank you for the transparency! Much appreciation to the volunteers who have had to unfortunately handle this.

That being said we would like input in what image sites we will be whitelisting

Although I am from another instance I did want to suggest some common hosts, while I use Imgbox personally I often see Imgur and Catbox used quite a bit.

Catbox actually appears to actually be a generic temporary file host though, rather than a dedicated image host

As another avenue to the report button, could Lemmy world have a new community LemmyWorldSupport_911 where anyone can post and it's monitored by moderators or admins and they can promptly react?. (911 =American number for emergency services)

As part of the community rules, posting for stuff that doesn't warrant a 911 reaction could result an penalties for anyone looking to "prank" it or abuse it's intended purpose.

Some small communities only have one mod and that mod has to sleep.

(911 =American number for emergency services)

Could also do 112, since Lemmy.world is hosted in Europe :)

In Aus, we have 000, triple zero. I think 112 works here too, might just be mobiles though. It used to be triple oh, but some people saw the keypads had letters on them and dialled 777 or whatever number o was on.

I've probably seen too much American media. I'm happy for any, even 0118 999 881 999 119 725 ... 3 but it might be a bit hard to learn.

I’m planning on making something like that, but am first focussing on improving the features we already have.

I'm glad I missed that, but sorry anyone had to see that.

I hope you will consider whitelisting https://imgbb.com/

It works well with Lemmy posts because it allows direct image linking.

If you're hesitant to whitelist that site, then I hope you will allow https://postimages.org/

The drawback to the latter site is it's ad-ridden (not a problem with uBO).

Both are superior image sharing sites to imgur, IMHO.

I use postimages every day so I hope it will be whitelisted.

I recently switched to imgbb after someone without an adblocker showed me a screenshot of one of my posts, but in my opinion everyone should be using uBlock Origin anyway, so I'd be ok with either option. They're both extremely good image sharing sites.

The trouble is not everyone has an easy way to use an ad blocker - in particular iPhone users.

I mean, they should really just get an Android phone and install Firefox (or a hardened fork) then uBO, but try telling them that.

Hyperweb - my Safari iOS savior, supporting Adblock Plus (thus uBlock Origin) filterlists

Yeah but you're still not getting an Android with hardened Firefox :p

Also that sounds like you have to manually add the lists, you can get uBO proprietary lists from github but I think most people would miss those.

Might be some Pixelfed instances worth adding to the list. I've been using pixelfed.de which has its community guidelines here. Haven't had to report anything yet but the process to do so is easy (went through the first couple clicks and hit cancel) and it looks like they've got a way to flag posts for site admin review, not just mods. Seems like a good system to keep that sort of content under control and, though I haven't looked through their documentation and code to confirm, I would be surprised if they didn't have something automated too.

Thank you for doing unpleasant work like this when it comes up.

Do we know the site they used to host the CSAM? Can't we try and get whoever runs those servers to get this troll. Cause if they got one CSAM I bet they have a bunch. Maybe the FBI can raid them and help save some kids from these monsters.

From context clues it seems like they were hosted on Lemmy which is why they are now limiting image hosting.

Afaik after the first time this happened lemmy.world added content scanning, but from this post it sounds like the images were on an external hosting site and couldn't be scanned.

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You have also implemented a ban on any contribution from a VPN without announcing it. It has been very annoying to figure out.

Please do announce these kind of changes and limitations you implement publicly unless you absolutely cannot.

Because it's related, shitposting@lemmyworld needs you! At least, far as I can tell. That's what it says anyway.
A user from lemy.lol did the deed there about 4 hours ago and nothing happened since.

We could use some tools to report a user directly instead of just blocking them. And if it doesn't already exist, a common report log or something like that so that the mods and admins can work together on this.

Maybe an option across federated instances for admins to mark and hide posts for review, to at least get rid of the danger for regular users. Or an automated system that allows for multiple user reports and to hide a post for review.

That being said we would like input in what image sites we will be whitelisting.

I'd like to suggest postimages(dot)org. I've been using that site since leaving reddit/imgur over the summer. They seem to be a good free service (although they do offer a premium tier) and according to their 'about us' section they've been operating for 20 years.

As one of the smaller instance admins who had to deal with the content.. one of the image host was postimg.cc, so I'm not sure how fast they take down the content or if they run some kind of filtering.

Well that's disturbing to hear. I figured if they've been around that long they'd have worked out effective tools to combat that stuff. But I suppose that might be a naive assumption, it must be a constant issue for image hosting services.

Damn, this broken record again? That sucks, and I'm sorry you had to see that.

Great contribution to the discussion

I dunno, I was just kind of disappointed that this kind of crap is still going on. Like, I was hoping for something more interesting, in a way, rather than the same old pathetic trolling.

Right next to the same old pathetic whining. Peas in a pod!

You'd fit in better back on reddit.

You'd think, but when I called out zero-content comments there, they reacted just like you are. Damned if I do, damned if I don't 🤷‍♂️

I made a simple comment showing my support to the admin, which after this experience I'm sure is much needed. You've come in here behaving like an ass with zero effort yourself - you were wrong, my comments have had far more value to the discussion than anything you've brought. I don't think the problem is the platform, I think the problem is you.

🤣🤣🤣

Damn, this broken record again? That sucks, and I'm sorry you had to see that.

Woah, check out that value loaded comment

my comments have had far more value to the discussion

🤣🤣🤣

I host all my images privately on https://share.jackgreenearth.org. Can you please whitelist that? I promise it's safe.

I mean, sure you're probably a good guy but I don't think it's a great idea to whitelist personal hosts

I'm the only one with access to uploading to it. You can always just unwhitelist it later if I break your rules - which I don't intend to.

But that just requires more effort and more work for the moderators. It's better to stick with other platforms that already specialise in image hosting who will moderate their content themselves too.

Quick sidenote: there are thousands of fediverse servers at this point and nobody can control the image hosts they use. I think what makes sense is to make ones own instance and federate with world, as a lot of us do.

thank you.

I am trying to get into Lemmy after Reddit's descent into a hate filled fest of terrorism supporters and foreign bots trying to disrupt communities.

I have been very hesitant to post and participate here because there are several communities that seem to be going down the same path of being formed to exclusively pushed one specific narrative.

For example /c/WorldNews should be deleted as well as the mods. it isn't covering world news. They have posted a single topic for one point and removed anyone else

that is against your ToS as well since it's being used to push hate and racism.