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: @[email protected] 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.

  • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙
    0•1 year ago

    DEVELOPERS produce a software to help people post images and text online. Nothing bad about that.

    ADMINS install the developers software on a server and run it as an instance.

    MODS (if any exist besides the admin) moderate the instance to keep illegal content off the site.

    USERS may choose to use the software to post CSAM.

    None of these groups of people have paid for or are getting paid for their time. USERS generally don’t take much legal risk for what’s posted, as instance owners don’t ask for personally identifiable information from users.

    Sites like reddit, although we all hate it, do make a profit, and some of that profit is used to pay “trust and safety” teams who are paid (generally not very well, usually in underdeveloped or developing countries) to wade through thousands of pictures of CSAM, SA, DV/IPV and other violent material, taking it down as it gets posted to facebook, reddit, other major online properties.

    —-

    Developers, admins and mods are generally doing this in their free time. Not sure how many people realize this but developers, admins and mods are also people who need to eat - developers have a skill of developing software, so many open source devs are also employed and contribute to open source in their off time. Admins may be existing sysadmins at companies but admin lemmy instances in their off time. Mods do it to protect the community and the instance itself.

    USERS can be a bit self-important at times. We get it, you all generate the content on this site. Some content isn’t just unwanted though, it’s illegal and if not responded to quickly could mean not only a shutdown instance but also possible jailtime for admins, who ultimately will be the ones who are running a “reddit-like site” or “a haven for child porn”.