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

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by sunaurus@lemm.ee to c/meta@lemm.ee

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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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[-] ScrollinMyDayAway@lemm.ee 238 points 10 months ago

This is sick. Kudos to mods for dealing with this garbage. I hope the posters are all hunted down and punished.

[-] DudePluto@lemm.ee 78 points 10 months 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

[-] Pandantic@midwest.social 32 points 10 months ago

Just like self-isolation when you have a cold - the healthy and wise thing to do.

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[-] TheAndrewBrown@lemm.ee 124 points 10 months 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.

[-] hoodatninja@kbin.social 33 points 10 months ago

Quality of posts will go up too. There’s a direct correlation with (worse) quality and image posts.

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[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 95 points 10 months 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.

[-] lemann@lemmy.one 56 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

And I'm honestly sorry that people are blaming & attacking you and various other Hexbear users 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 HB discussions or even talk with you, they're just shown the worst take from a minority (although tbf HB does 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)

Edit: replaced "guys" with a more neutral term

[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 32 points 10 months 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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[-] Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net 94 points 10 months ago

We had to deal with something similar on lemmygrad a while ago. All power to you for destroying these annoying bastards.

[-] Gacrux@lemm.ee 48 points 10 months ago

they are more disgusting than annoying tbh

[-] Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net 45 points 10 months ago

hear hear

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[-] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 55 points 10 months ago

condolences for having to deal with this and full support of your actions.

[-] Ho_Chi_Chungus@hexbear.net 49 points 10 months ago

My honest reaction to this:

[removed externally hosted image]

[-] Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net 30 points 10 months ago

bro they banned images did you not read the post lol

[-] Cris_Color@lemm.ee 49 points 10 months 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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[-] Mindfury@hexbear.net 48 points 10 months ago

fucking disgusting, and I'm sorry you and your mods, admins and users were subjected to this

[-] JakenVeina@lemm.ee 44 points 10 months ago

No apologies necessary.

[-] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 44 points 10 months 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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[-] IoSapsai@lemm.ee 41 points 10 months 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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[-] usa_suxxx@hexbear.net 34 points 10 months ago

Damn this sucks.

[-] iesou@lemm.ee 33 points 10 months ago

This is why we can't have nice things.

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[-] thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net 30 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

its better to be safe, than to risk it with the spammers, hopefully this matter will get resolved quickly

[-] randint@lemm.ee 29 points 10 months ago

It's honestly sad that some well-intentioned laws can be used to attack online platforms.

[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 30 points 10 months 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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[-] Anonymousllama@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months 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

[-] redballooon@lemm.ee 26 points 10 months ago

Did you alert authorities?

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this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023

772 points (99.4% liked)

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