I hope the devs take this seriously as an existential threat to the fediverse.
The developers who build lemmy aren’t able to put in CSAM blocking code. That’s not how this works. I assume the commenter meant to say “admins” here, as developers write the code, they don’t admin the sites. If a developer has a lemmy instance they admin, they they are both a dev and an admin. Lemmy wasn’t built for CSAM sharing specifically, it is a site that allows sharing of CSAM as much as reddit or facebook do. The devs can’t do much about this. The admins and mods can.
Lemmyshitpost was one of the largest communities on the network both in AUPH and subscribers.
Neat. Irrelevant, but cool.
If taking the community down is the only option here, that’s extremely insufficient and bodes death for the platform at the hands of uncontrolled spam.
This I take issue with, and is what I mostly responded to.
“If taking the community down is the only option here” well no, it’s not. We could just get 100’s of mods to specifically address this one user’s posting of CSAM. Hey, anyone want to moderate the site? Oh right, and they’ll need to be vetted, and they’ll need to keep doing this on the side for free as volunteers since lemmy is volunteer run…
“that’s extremely insufficient” hard disagree. A community is liable for the content on it. If we put a CSAM post up on a site and leave it around for a few minutes, that’s one thing. If it’s left up for days and weeks, that’s quite another problem entirely. The minute that an admin or mod saw CSAM material, they did the right thing by shutting that down. Even if it means downtime for users. Oh no! Users can’t read lemmyshitpost and now the world is ending.
“and bodes death for the platform at the hands of uncontrolled spam.” Welcome to the internet, where all platforms are at the risk of uncontrolled spam. At first it was just email, but then it was bulletin boards, and then message boards, and then forums, and then community-moderated forums like reddit and lemmy. This has and will be a problem. This isn’t a new concern for lemmy devs or admins or mods, they all are aware that this can happen and is why they do what they do. Turning off the community is a viable option, and is what has happened in larger companies too while they cleaned up the mess.
Additionally, it seems you are contradicting your own post from 20 minutes prior to your current comment. Perhaps you responded to the wrong comment?
I’ve been very consistent in my arguments. Show me the contradiction and I’ll address it.
TL;DR: users cannot expect to be allowed to post CSAM material on lemmy instances. Allowing CSAM material to be up on lemmy instances constitutes a legal risk for admin owners, and thus we cannot leave it up. Blocking a community (even if it’s like the bestest and most favorited and most subscribed and everyone loves it and wow just super-duper community) is a viable means of blocking all CSAM on that community while it is cleaned up. To suggest that the community should have stayed online is assinine. To suggest that the admins should not have blocked a community to combat CSAM is assinine. Trust admins to do their jobs.