And, if you are comfortable with sharing, what are some of the worst things that you’ve seen?
I don’t see disturbing stuff that often, usually few times a year, but it’s usually some very disgusting csam.
Most of the time it’s just spam and trolls, but from time to time these degenerates show up.
It doesn’t really have any lasting effect on me, I kinda manage to not think about it at all. I guess my aphantasia helps here as well, I think it’s much harder for folks who can visualise things in their mind.
Csam on lemmy?? What??
The fact that you aren’t aware is a good sign that mods/admins are doing their jobs.
That and I’m truly greatful to all the users who may have noticed it first and reported them so that we can take care of it✊
Here’s a handy flowchart for checking if a website has had CSAM uploaded to it:
Has the site ever allowed file uploads by users?
-> No: Users have not uploaded any CSAM.
-> Yes: The site has had CSAM uploaded to it.
CSAM is the reason I wouldn’t consider self hosting tbh. I fear it could result in me having hundreds of GBs worth of the stuff without me even noticing.
I guess so
Can you report it? My vague understanding is that the laws of the country where the server is hosted apply, so hopefully the police would have resources to investigate.
We can and we do. Though I wouldn’t expect much out of it. I live in the EU and while it’s great at many things, being quick to act is not one of them.
The worst has probably been the CSAM and the detailed instructions on how to kill yourself or suicidal ideation.
In the end, to me, it’s just more content to remove, just like spam.
I moderate a few smaller but active ones. I don’t see a whole lot of bad stuff apart from the occasional garbage opinion such as [insert least favorite ideology here].
This might be because the places I mod are pretty chill in nature. I’m sure of the topic was something more volatile and spicy, such as politics, it could be a different story.
There was a while after the Reddit exodus where apparently lots of CSAM was being posted. I never saw it personally, but apparently it was a big issue.
What is scam?
Csam= Child Sexual Abuse Material. It’s CP.
Ahhhh, kinda wish I hadn’t asked… But thanks for answering.
As far as I’ve seen the mods and admins have been doing a stellar job of removing it drom the platform.
Most things are ads, spam or people reporting comments they politically disagree with.
There was a troll spamming cp some time ago, but that was before my time as a mod / admin.
people reporting comments they politically disagree with.
Wouldn’t this be mod abuse?
You might have misinterpreted it. It referes to users falsely reporting users they disagree with. This often happens in the context of political discussions.
What I didn’t mean is removing comments I personally disagree with. This would indeed be mod abuse.
Sorry I meant that idiots flooding mods with false reports is abuse of mods ie creating extra work for the mod and taking hsi time away from the actual job.
I can see threat actors using this tactic to wear down the mod team.
You are right. We had some of those. They’re gone now.
EDIT: I was confused, since mod abuse is usually associated with mods acting unprofessionally / in bad faith.
When I volunteered as a new mod starting last year, I saw some horrific csam posts that I can’t forget, I just hope those who reported them have recieved some mental health support.
To cope, I hike to my local park, take edibles, try to do anything to keep me distracted but it’s hard to forget. Even as I sit here freezing in my chair the ticking of my clock is a deafening reminder of the garbage I’ve seen. It doesn’t help in that I’m an empath(I receive the pain of others) either so I just think about why these things happen and try to promote systems that prevent past mistakes from reoccurring.
A couple systems I’m aiming to improve is public education and mental health support. When people know how to better protect themselves and those most trustworthy nearest to them, the higher likelihood that atrocities like these can be prevented and stopped. That’s the hope anyways. No guarantee it’ll work.
It doesn’t help in that I’m an empath(I receive the pain of others)
Like a super power / supernatural kind of thing, or you mean that figuratively?
With our world becoming crueler it feels more like a curse
Is it only pain you receive, not positive emotions?
It’s a mix of both but at times it can be difficult to feel positive feelings (this is most likely due to my family)
So far I’ve just seen some deeply racist memes and comments. Thankfully it hasn’t been very frequent, so it’s not really been anything I had to cope with mentally or anything.
Some freak posted a pt cruiser. Therapy bills in the thousands.
deleted by creator
This community was included in that spamwave a few months ago. I saw a few CSAM here. We had to lock the entire community down to deal with it.
That spamwave at the time was happening in the entire fediverse btw.
What do you do with something as bad as that. Is there a way to report it to the authorities before you delete it?
Removed comments or posts (by mods) get logged in the modlog. So admins and mods can still view them.
I was wondering if the bad stuff gets reported to the police. Maybe, that’s up to the admins.
Well, we did report them to the admins. Afaik they said they reported it to the police.
Woah what the hell? I’ve seen like 5 comments mentioning CSAM. I’m gonna need someone to elaborate on what the fuck was going on
The Reddit API exodus in 2023 brought hundreds of new instances and tens of thousands of new users to Lemmy. Unfortunately, many of those instances had open registrations, Lemmy’s moderation tools were very basic (they still are), and there were not enough mods/admins to provide 24-hour coverage on the larger instances. A handful of trolls took advantage of the situation by posting grotesque stuff for lulz: CSAM, scat porn, racist memes, etc. Sometimes it would stay up for hours until someone with the right permissions noticed and took it down.
The situation is better now. Though there is still plenty of room for improvement.
I run a community that has like 8 posts, most by me, so never. I need to post again cause that Marvel game is dying.
If you feel left out I have a FunkoPop and a mason jar that I can post there.
Not an admin or moderator but dear god it must be difficult to cope mentally and emotionally for any and all moderators to see truly disturbing stuff. That’s a salute they don’t get enough credit for.
None
No one wants to join my instance
FYI, you can now post instances at [email protected] :)
What does your instance (I’m presuming redlemmy.com) offer that sets it apart from the rest?
you may have found my problem
Do instances offer something that set them apart from the rest?
If not, then people usually don’t move to them
Well, now I wonder what it is that an instance may offer over others. I just picked an instance from some resource that said to pick something popular but not too popular and had some suggestions. Wonder what I’m missing from other instances
I wonder what it is that an instance may offer over others
Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that I think are important when considering an instance:
- Stability — eg uptime, how quickly outages are addressed, etc.
- Speed and responsiveness — eg how quickly one can download resources from the instance, how quickly pages can load, etc.
- Accessibility of the admin(s) — eg how easy is it to get in touch with the instance admin(s)? are they open to communication?
- Cost sustainability — eg how is the instance funded? Is their model sustainable?
- Infrastructure sustainability — eg how is the instance powered? Is it in a stable location?
- Local Laws — ie what laws is the instance subject to?
- ToS — ie what rules does the instance impose on its users?
- Who is the instance federated and defederated with, and what is their criteria for federation?
- Other smaller things like ability to upload media, number of local communities, number of users, front-end/appearance, etc.
Things I personally look for in an instance:
- An active admin that has a level head and seems like a good person (preferably multiple admins to prevent Bus factor)
- Instance runs a fairly recent version of Lemmy. If they run a very old version, that could be a sign of problems
- Is defederated with troll or drama filled instances
- Having a unique theme or vibe instead of being a general server is a big plus that makes it stand out, but not strictly necessary
I think that It depends on the instance, but I would argue that, generally, yes.
I bet you could get a lot of users if you reached out to some choirs. They might split between signing up for your instance and yellowlemmy.com, though 😂
I moderate [email protected] and so far I have not encountered a single disturbing post that had to be removed. I imagine in non-political areas of lemmy, people are more chill.
I don’t think Lemmy attracts that crowd, but I used to moderate a fine arts Facebook group and my god… The pretentious drama wars. Like two museum directors were going to strangle each other over a Rembrandt.
Apparently some mods definition of disturbing is different than the rest of ours. One of them thinks talking about jury nullification is the utmost horror.
