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.

    • DudePluto@lemm.ee
      ·
      1 year 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

      • AeroLemming@lemm.ee
        ·
        1 year ago

        I didn't like Apple's idea of scanning private images for such imagery, but I think it would be a fantastic technology to use for social media. If they open sourced it, it could help Lemmy a lot.

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
    ·
    1 year 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
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year 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 [he/him]
        ·
        1 year 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.

        • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
          ·
          1 year ago

          trump

          To be fair, some of the rhetoric you all use makes your political compass difficult to navigate.

            • PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocksB
              ·
              1 year ago

              Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=9nPVkpWMH9k

              Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

              I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

            • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
              ·
              1 year ago

              That video could have easily been 5 minutes. Phweew.

              Say something bad about communism.

              • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago
                off-topic

                About "communism" itself? What is the scope here? Token criticism is meaningless but I will humor you: I dislike the Khmer Rouge.

                I don't care to hear you say something bad about neoliberalism because it's the most prized action by anarcho-bidenists to say "NATO bad" and then agree with NATO about most of its enemies.

                • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Everyone should be able to point out flaws in a system, as no system is perfect. Not even communism. So, point out the flaws in communism, in plain English.

                  • Zoift [he/him]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Sure, heres some intro-level crit.

                    Marx was completely off base with his prediction revolution would arise from urban proleitaritized factory workers and intelligentsia in "developed" nations.

                    Historically, the majority of revolutions have come from rural agricultural workers in the most exploited colonial holdings.

                    Luckily, communist political theory didn't end with Marx.

                    • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      1 year ago

                      What country has been a good example of communism working?

                      Edit: TLDR; China, Cuba, Vietnam. None of which I’d consider great places to live, or particularly in line with Socialism.

                      What I did learn is, hexbears like to team up for the kill, but trip all over themselves and land on their own… claws? Hilarity.

                      For the record, I’m a socialist, just not a troll.

                          • Awoo [she/her]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            1 year ago

                            List within the study and the classifications:

                            Show

                            If this image doesn't display for you(because of the attacks) let me know and I'll find some other way to share it.

                            Here's an image of how the comparison shakes up:

                            Show

                            • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                              ·
                              1 year ago

                              Well, your article was from 1986, and this image lists the USSR… please, 2023 successful communist countries. List, text.

                              • Awoo [she/her]
                                ·
                                edit-2
                                1 year ago

                                I am 100% certain that if you compared socialist countries today you would get the same result.

                                This is extremely obvious when you consider that despite obviously lower levels of development in countries like China, Cuba and Vietnam have higher life expectancy than America.

                                Not to mention that 21% of america is illiterate whereas literacy in socialist countries is consistently the highest in the world.

                                Any person doing even the most limited of critical thought about healthcare access, education and life expectancy can understand that socialist countries today would come out on top when compared to their capitalist counterparts that sit at the same level of development.

                                The fact that you just dismiss it with the USSR present in the data is odd. You are aware that rent in the USSR was 5% of your total income correct? I think your perspective and understanding of how people lived is not in line with reality, your confusion about this data is because you have fully bought into propaganda instead of getting a proper and measured idea about things. You are not immune to propaganda.

                                • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                  ·
                                  1 year ago

                                  Life expectancy is your way to determine successful?

                                  I’m not sure i’d really consider any of those places a good place to live. China is pretty crazy and jails people for talking about Winnie the Pooh. Is that your idea of government?

                                  Cuba and Vietnam also have lower life expectancy than the US.

                                  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

                                  Look at Hong Kong kicking ass at #1 though. (Not exactly communist with all that love for the free market)

                                  I think your info might be a bit out of date at this point.

                                  But thanks for the chat.

                                  • Awoo [she/her]
                                    ·
                                    edit-2
                                    1 year ago

                                    Using wikipedia is dogshit, stop using it.

                                    The World Bank data is here, which is the same data used in the study: https://datatopics.worldbank.org

                                    The actual current data is:

                                    USA: 77.28

                                    Cuba: 77.57

                                    Vietnam: 75.38

                                    China: 78.08

                                    Look at Hong Kong kicking ass at #1 though.

                                    Hong Kong is not a country, it is a city in China. Individual cities are not good examples of life expectancy when life expectancy of cities typically outperforms life expectancy of rural regions due to quicker access to life-saving medical facilities afforded by density. This is why you really shouldn't rely on Wikipedia for your understanding of anything. You should go to primary sources yourself instead of allowing editors to curate and present information for you.

                                    I think your info might be a bit out of date at this point.

                                    Irony?

                                    • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                      ·
                                      1 year ago

                                      Worldbank.org

                                      403 - Forbidden: Access is denied. You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.

                                      I don’t get the irony. Your data is either not found or decades old. Then you shut down Wikipedia, which has sources cited.

                                      I can make an image to display whatever info I want. Your sources are poor, or biased.

                                      • Awoo [she/her]
                                        ·
                                        edit-2
                                        1 year ago

                                        Your data is either not found

                                        Bro it's the world bank. If you can't access it that's a problem on your fucking side not the most reliable data source used in academia for nations on the fucking planet.

                                        Holy fucking shit is this your first time even hearing about them? Do they teach anything in your schools at all?

                                        • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                          ·
                                          1 year ago

                                          https://i.imgur.com/kkmn4g2.jpg

                                          So, http://youre.fullofsh.it

                                          Nice try though.

                                          • Zoift [he/him]
                                            ·
                                            1 year ago

                                            Lmao, good work chief. You tried nothing and are proud af.

                                            https://databank.worldbank.org/

                                            Here, took me 10 seconds of googling to find the main directory. You'll have to type in the search parameters yourself, because im not as nice as Awoo.

                                            • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                              ·
                                              edit-2
                                              1 year ago

                                              Let me understand this… you send me a url that is invalid. Then you mock me because I can’t get an invalid link to work. Then, you correct yourself and blame the issue on me, and not you.

                                              Oh and, you forgot to switch your account back.

                                              • Zoift [he/him]
                                                ·
                                                1 year ago

                                                Different user Lib, and no. I'm mocking you for being unable to do even the most trite bit of googling.

                                                • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                  ·
                                                  1 year ago

                                                  Why would I do someone else’s job for them? We should all pull our own weight, comrade.

                                                  Life expectancy has 0 results. What would you like me to search for?

                                                  • Zoift [he/him]
                                                    ·
                                                    edit-2
                                                    1 year ago

                                                    https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.FE.IN?locations=CN

                                                    Damn thats weird

                                                    • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                      ·
                                                      1 year ago

                                                      Wait so it’s data.worldbank.org lol

                                                      What happened to databank.worldbank.org?

                                                      You guys love to give shit, but you’re tripping all over yourselves.

                                                        • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                          ·
                                                          1 year ago

                                                          You’re inflating my interest. They’re just unable to say “oh I gave you the wrong link, here is the right one.”

                                                            • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                              ·
                                                              1 year ago

                                                              If I gave bad url, you would have mocked me. You’re giving your comrade a break.

                                                              I will only put forth the amount of effort they do. If they can’t be bothered to check their work, I’m not going to be bothered to assist them in finding their own sources.

                                                              Either way, the data has nothing to do with the main topic, so I’m wondering how we got here. Adios.

                                                • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                  ·
                                                  1 year ago

                                                  That doesn’t even make sense.

                                                  Also, blocked. Have a great night, nothing personal… just not into bear piles.

                                                  Fuck capitalism ✌️

                                                  • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
                                                    ·
                                                    1 year ago

                                                    It makes perfect sense- they're pointing out you're probably projecting your assumption of account swapping. Those two users are quite certainly different people with different posting habits and pretty significant history on our site.

                                                        • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                          ·
                                                          1 year ago

                                                          Well, “correct” is relative and none of you seem to be willing to participate in a two-way conversation. It just ends up in failed attempts to “win” some kind of game I wasn’t aware we were playing.

                                                          I mean, this thread is a great example. I asked what countries are currently communist and successful (relative yes).

                                                          The answer included the USSR. They can’t even be bothered to know their own shit. And instead of going “oops, my bad,” like an adult, it escalates and they all sniff it out and pile on.

                                                          Honestly, most people find hexbears pretty funny (like funny sad). And when questioned on specific views, they sound very NOT communist.

                                                          I have to remind myself, hexbears are just the LEFTY extremist trolls and their methods are identical to righty extremist trolls, and to not feed the bear. (But it’s so fun to watch you all dodge questions)

                                                          For the record, I’m very left. Socialist even. Not so much communist, but we share a lot of ideas. I also believe trolling the left pushes them further center, and it is counterproductive outside of your own instance.

                                                          • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
                                                            ·
                                                            edit-2
                                                            1 year ago

                                                            That is a hilarious take since I've read through it and found that you will weasel away from the issue at every possibility, including pretending not to know how the internet works. It's quite disingenuous and I'm sure that passers-by reading the exchange will come to the same conclusion.

                                                            • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                              ·
                                                              1 year ago

                                                              I made myself pretty clear. The url didn’t work, and it’s not my job to find their sources after supplying my own that was disliked.

                                                              They weaseled out of my questions, so I don’t see a need to give theirs any interest.

                                                              I see you just weaseled away from everything else I said. So, your attempt at insult appears to be you looking in a mirror.

                                                              I don’t need to convince you. I know trolls won’t ever back down, even when wrong. You all have identical flawed arguments and methods of attack. I find it quite entertaining how exactly the same you all are.

                                                              But, as long as you’re not voting for the righties, I can’t really hate you. 🤷‍♂️

                                                              • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
                                                                ·
                                                                1 year ago

                                                                honestly, the "nuh uh, YOU" responses are too good, it's like just admitting that you're outclassed and won't bother to engage

                                                                    • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                                      ·
                                                                      1 year ago

                                                                      The awesome part is that’s what you’re doing. ❤️

                                                                      I love the argument style of trolls. It’s all whatabout, and bombarding. I like to just let it play itself out. The only person who cares is them.

                                                                      I bet you can’t even tell me what we all were originally talking about without making up something that eventually turns into an insult. That’s the tactic of a troll, never get to the point.

                                          • Awoo [she/her]
                                            ·
                                            edit-2
                                            1 year ago

                                            That's literally not what you just linked to lol. It's what I linked to sure. But you know how to type in a basic URL instead of a subdomain that's only used for certain links.

                                            The url error on my part is irrelevant. You're pretending to be internet illiterate for the sake of defending a position you already know can't be defended. This is what you people always do, rather than accept that any real analysis of human conditions under socialism vs capitalism does not support capitalism you deflect.

                                            • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                              ·
                                              1 year ago

                                              Please provide a link to your source that a person can click and get the info. Check your URL before sending.

                                              Also, please stop trying to gaslight me. If you can’t provide actual data—just leave.

                                              • Awoo [she/her]
                                                ·
                                                1 year ago

                                                You are not a moron, stop pretending to be. You know how to use the internet. You don't "win" by saying "please provide a link". It's there on the worldbank site, look it the fuck up and stop resorting to debatebro redditisms. If you spoke like this to someone in person they would punch you in the face.

                                                • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                  ·
                                                  1 year ago

                                                  Pull your weight, comrade. You cite a source link, make it work. Don’t be lazy.

                                                    • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                                                      ·
                                                      1 year ago

                                                      I can’t. Blocked. Too many of you all at once. Blocking you too cause you’re just coming in for seconds.

                                                        • robinn2
                                                          ·
                                                          edit-2
                                                          1 year ago

                                                          deleted by creator

                                              • robinn2
                                                ·
                                                edit-2
                                                1 year ago

                                                deleted by creator

                                  • robinn2
                                    ·
                                    edit-2
                                    1 year ago

                                    deleted by creator

                                    • PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocksB
                                      ·
                                      1 year ago

                                      Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/nFUC0UWgdGY

                                      Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

                                      I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

          • Awoo [she/her]
            ·
            1 year ago

            political compass

            Anyone that uses this to navigate politics is themselves politically illiterate.

            • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
              ·
              1 year ago

              Ahhh yes, someone who cannot read between the lines to understand the true meaning. Thank you for this wonderful example.

              • Awoo [she/her]
                ·
                1 year ago

                "I'm scared of having my political illiteracy exposed and dunked on so I only ever write intentionally vague responses." smuglord

                • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I felt it was pretty understandable. We can have a nice conversation, or we can stop. Up to you.

                  • Awoo [she/her]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Say something that isn't vague and useless then.

                      • Awoo [she/her]
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        1 year ago

                        Which ones? There are plenty of rich working class people that I consider comrades. The issue we socialists have isn't income, the issue is class, which is quite different.

                        Your class is determined not by your income but by how you receive your income. A working class person makes their income by selling their labour to a member of the bourgeoisie (capital-owner), whereas a member of the bourgeoisie makes their income by stealing the surplus labour from a member of the working class.

                        There are working class people that can make quite a bit of money. Athletes and actors for example. Although in many cases once people make that kind of money they also become members of the bourgeoisie by investing it in passive income such as landlording or stocks, that is not true of all of them and is very much something that should not be assumed.

                        As for killing the bourgeoisie, I am in favour of simply phasing them out. Although I am not naive enough to think that they will just allow that to happen without trying to kill every last one of us first to prevent it, and believe in the need for us to be prepared for violent action when they do turn to that option. It is not an act that I think should be advocated for by itself, other than with some hefty layers of irony as a means of generally promoting militancy.

                        • PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocksB
                          ·
                          1 year ago

                          Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/2mI_RMQEulw

                          Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

                          I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

                        • 摆 烂@lemm.ee
                          ·
                          1 year ago

                          Do consider a person with $500,000,000 USD to be a comrade?

                          There is a certain level of worth that is unobtainable without being a horrible human.

                          • Awoo [she/her]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            1 year ago

                            It depends entirely upon how it is obtained.

                            Generally you are correct that a certain level of worth is unobtainable without being a horrible human but not always. As I said, there are many athletes who are working class despite earning many tens of millions.

                            I very much consider Muhammed Ali a revolutionary comrade for example.

                            Show

                            Then there is Maradona. An incredible comrade who has Fidel Castro's face tattoo'd to his leg and Che's on his arm. Who did incredibly important work for socialism in latin america.

                            Show

                            You should focus less on their total income and more on how it is made. Class is what matters, and while class generally forms along the lines of rich vs poor this is a reductive simplification of marxist thought.

                          • barsoap@lemm.ee
                            ·
                            1 year ago

                            I mean... Herrenknecht has a revenue of roughly 1.2bn Euro, value is estimated at 800mn. Sure he hired tons of people and he's conservative, but Martin Herrenknecht legitimately built that thing, both the engineering and business side and seems well-liked enough by his employees.

                            And if we wants to drive a Porsche and live in a mansion I'd say fucking go for it. Now, OTOH, inheriting that kind of thing... Herrenknecht Junior practically grew up in the company and is a natural candidate for leadership, the company is now owned by a family foundation and there's where my issues start: We'll have a dynasty, profit gets siphoned off and paid out to the family. Would've much rather see them go the way of Bosch or Zeiss which are actual foundations, similar setup to e.g. Mozilla.

          • SoloboiNanook [comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Its really not complicated.

            Just communist/anarchist/far more left than normal western discourse with a large amount of cynicism.

        • HelloHotel@lemm.ee
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago
          CSAM sourcing?

          Where do these people get that much CSAM. somebody once said that to the best of their understanding, it was new CSAM images each time, meaning not many repeats. My collection of reddit memes costs me ~15-30GB, all of sbubby costs ~5GB. where is it pooled 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

          Most companies that build CSAM detectors, by nature of their work, have a lot of it. likely thousands of photos and videos were willingly handed over to put into some vault to fight against it's existance. If its a large corperation attacking is, it nesisarly means a leak from a CSAM vault wether it was intentional (an authorized attack) or not (opsec mistakes or insiders). Or it means there was no vault (negligence) or it wasnt tranfered securely (opsec mistakes).

          it's just the only motive I can even think of beyond it being a rogue crank.

          Its not hard to build a bot that scrapes a webpage of its images, they can easly aggrogate that much content over decades.

      • usa_suxxx [they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, it's kind of weird. Doesn't whatever gets posted eventually get sent over to the other federated servers? Like every server saves a copy? Like the dumbest attack on another server would be this.

      • Catradora_Stalinism [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        We doubled the amount of mods, and banned anything remotely resembling the things on-site. Sadly many times it had to be a brave lemmygrad to check it first and take the bullet for us to report it. I was one of those people on several occasions. I still cringe at the memories. It lasted a few months iirc.I haven't seen whatever is hitting you guys, but our bots had some recognizable features, usually hiding their spam behind spoilers or links.

        It really was just a mobilization, lockdown, and purging everything that was suspicious until it stopped. That or they found a way to block those bots. I wasn't in the command center by any means so the internal decisions I don't know too much about.

  • TheAndrewBrown@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year 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.

  • Mindfury [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

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

  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I honestly think this is the reason why message boards generally don't have the feature to attach images to posts anymore.

  • Cris@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year 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.

      • Cris@lemm.ee
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        That's fucking dope, thank you very much for the link to the issue!

      • HelloHotel@lemm.ee
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Good, its an API that can fit diffrent tools even if one is promoted. Upgrading means switching out a binary file. Posix modularization FTW.

  • Io Sapsai 🌱@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year 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.

  • thelastaxolotl [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

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

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    1 year ago

    If you're concerned about legal liability I think it's worth noting that there is some protection for websites in this matter. For the most part as long as you're taking "reasonable action" against it you're not liable, and that most laws take into consideration the resources of the site dealing with the uploads.

    Not pleasant for users though of course. And the speed at which its handled is obviously a concern.