One of the admins at lemmy.blahaj.zone asked us to purge a community and all of its users because they thought it was full of child sexual abuse material, aka CSAM, fka kiddy porn. We assured them that we had checked this comm thoroughly and we were satisfied that all of the models on it were of age.
The admin then demanded we purge the comm because they mistook it for CSAM, and claimed that the entire point of the community was to make people think it was CSAM. We vehemently disagreed that that was in fact the point of the community, but they decided to defederate from us anyway. That is of course their choice, but we will not purge our communities or users because someone else makes a mistake of fact, and then lays the responsibility for their mistake at our feet.
If someone made a community intended to fool people into thinking it was kiddy porn, that would be a real problem. If someone of age goes online and pretends – not roleplays, but pretends with intent to deceive – to be a child and makes porn, that is a real problem. Nobody here is doing that.
One of the reasons we run our instance the way that we do is that we want it to be inclusive. We don’t body shame, and we believe that all adults have a right to sexual expression. That means no adult on our instance is too thin, fat, bald, masculine, old, young, cis, gay, etc., to be sexy, and that includes adults that look younger than some people think they should. Everyone has a right to lust and to be lusted after. There’s no way to draw a line that says “you can’t like adult people that look like X” without crossing a line that we will not cross.
EDIT: OK, closing this post to new comments. Everything that needs saying has been said. Link to my convo with the blahaj admin here.
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Discourse like this sucks. Of course they are free to defederate but presenting this server as a place that allows abusive material is a gross misrepresentation.
I’m assuming the post in question was the one of imcherryblossom. Two seconds of Googling shows that they are a OnlyFans/Fansly model and proves they are above age, and she pretty clearly looks it too imo.
Equating that post with essentially abuse doesn’t sit right with me. Especially when this server has done a good job imo of banning even borderline content while mod tools improve.
like, damn, let petite people exist and be sexy ;-;
kudos to the admins/mods here as they’ve been absolutely fantastic when I have issues
After reading your post over at lemmynsfw, it’s pretty clear they were looking for a rationale to defederate and would have done that no matter what you did to prevent it.
You made the right choice if with an unfortunate outcome.
I don’t know if that’s true. I mean, maybe? Or maybe they just don’t want to see certain things and if so, that’s their prerogative. Some people may call this a platitude, but I truly think that’s the beauty of the Fediverse – diverse views, diverse approaches, diverse comfort levels.
It’s their server. Their choice. Thanks for your hard work!
FYI, when you’re replying to someone you don’t need to @ them. You only need to when you’re not directly replying to them.
I just hit reply. Didn’t @ the user manually at all. But I’m coming from Mastodon and using the web interface. Seems like many are commenting from lemmynsfw? That should work. Maybe?
Oh, that’s odd. Wonder if that’s just an odd quirk of Mastadon interacting with lemmy. On this end it looks like you’re manually typing out the users name on its own line.
That’s definitely what it is, seen it before
That’s what happens when you reply to a lemmy topic from mastodon. It treats it as a reply to the user.
Very odd, but I suppose it makes sense.
That’s just a part of Mastodon’s “Twitter legacy”.
you’d think a trans instance would understand that small bodies/tits don’t mean child porn
should they ban us trans girls with smaller goods because we’re just starting on HRT or aren’t at all???
???
I’ll take “discussions I won’t get into with a transwoman unless I know her incredibly well and probably not even then” for $1000, Alex.
LOL valid
Ditto, well put, thanks.
I really don’t see how being a trans community qualifies one to judge adult content. I think their objection, incorrect as it was, was based on overall aesthetics and framing, not just cup size. Apparently pearl-clutching is universal.
wat
A Buddhist temple.
ah
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“I’ll know 'em when I see em.”
Not authoritarian at all.
Wait, ok I need a link to the law or an article about it. That sounds too ridiculous to be true
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Australia
Just read some of that shit. Hentai cartoons and some 19th century writing.
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That’s insane
As requested, the correspondence between me and the blahaj admin, posted with her permission. It started with this message (her* original message is on the bottom, my reply is on top):
- I had used “they” for Ada earlier, which was mistaken. My apologies.
Okay… so it was adorableporn.
They are clearly wrong. Glad to have that settled.
Right? I don’t think they know how long that community has been a thing. I remember it for at least most of the time I was on reddit too…which was just over 10 years so it’s been around for a hot minute.
At this point Ada apparently had some communication with @[email protected] on Matrix, to which I was not privy. He told me, and I said that I had responded to Ada via Lemmy message. He had to step away, so I took over correspondence with Ada via Matrix.
Huge respect for the professionalism you’ve shown through this situation and in the way you run your instance. The quality of the content here is already impressive, and it’s been the thing that’s allowed me to cut my last cord with Reddit. Cheers.
That exchange is absolutely bonkers. I’m sorry but I have far less respect for Ada after reading that text exchange. Glad I don’t use that instance.
To be clear, Ada has her own imperatives and her own community, and I’m not here to judge how she runs her instance. lemmy.blahaj.zone means a lot to a lot of people, and as a queer weirdo myself I appreciate that a place like it exists on the lemmyverse.
Hey, you’re an instance admin and this kind of collegial statement is entirely appropriate given your role here.
Me? I’m a newbie here. I don’t have much to lose. My assessment of that exchange is: she bonkers. But that’s just me.
Well, I’m not familiar with who Ada is before this, but it honestly just sounds like she it’s taking a very hard gut-felt position on simulated child porn, and explicitly refusing to consider the problematic implications of her gut feeling. Consenting adults of any body type can and should be able to be “adorable” as a kink or non-kink nudity or other expression. Even if I completely understand the need to heavily dissuade CSAM, that sub just doesn’t fit that.
It looks like the turn in the conversation was the use of “mistake.” It was accurate but clearly triggered Ada and she stopped listening at that point. I’m sure she is a good person worthy of respect, but she’s in the wrong and I hope she reconsiders.
If you see how she runs her instance it’s no surprise. I’m sure the ban list for their instance is long and will eventually include the entire fediverse.
Fun fact, if you click the “Instances” button in the bottom right of the page on any instance, you can see what other instances it’s connected with, and if you scroll down far enough, which ones are blocked/defederated.
For reference, the instance we’re on, lemmynsfw, has 4 instances blocked.
Echoing the statements elsewhere here, you handled yourself very well, and it’s quite a different primary source representation from what was being described on their announcement post of why they were defederating.
Wow that was all something… Anyways sorry you have to moderate all this. Thanks for the transparency it clears up the misunderstanding(?) for me.
word.
I asked her to post the chats as well for transparency.
Not going to pass judgement on any side on this one… Just hate weird he said she said types of situations when everyone can just read the actual disagreement and go from there.
Now I can go back to other places in the Lemmyverse.
Edit: Ada confirmed the conversation is accurate and full. https://sh.itjust.works/comment/1425547
I think your goof was the “I can’t be held accountable for your mistake of fact”. I believe they’re clearly the one in the wrong regardless though.
It sucks but it is what it is.
I think it’s been an interesting debate. You both make good points. Ads about how “it’s similar to Loli in that it is trying to look underaged” and you with “we don’t discriminate against youthful looking adults”.
I guess I see it like DDLG kinks. I find it gross. I can see why people would want to ban it because they say they’re pretending to do something illegal like CSAM, but a lot of links pretend to do something illegal. BDSM pretends to tie people up and torture them but people don’t look at it and say “hey, you’re intentionally trying to look like you’re torturing people against their wills”.
People seem to have a gut reaction to illegal things with children moreso than illegal things with adults and I guess that’s why some people have this reaction to wanting to “purge” communities like that as opposed to ones that do things like CNC, BDSM, etc. But hey, as long as everyone involved is an adult and consenting that’s totally fine.
I found that “mistake of fact” retort hilarious.
She obviously took it as a personal insult, but the whole debate is based on her own mistaken identification. So it is hard to address the topic without also seeming to target the person.
You had handled this as perfectly and professionally as one could.
It is unfortunate that she could not accept your reasoning and still chose to defederate.
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This needs to be pinned in its own thread so people can read it.
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Why do those images stay the same small, almost unreadable (to my eyes) size no matter how far I zoom in?
As far as the back and forth, to be honest both sides are right after browsing that community.
I took a quick glance at the community in question, and while theres a lot of people who are clearly adults and being adorable… they shouldnt be prevented or banned for being adorable adults making porn… But there was also, just from my quick glance, several posts that leaned super heavily into looking underage and look barely a day over 14. . and I don’t care how much you say they are verified and over 18, The people coming here looking at those pics arent thinking that. All they are thinking is they found a pedo safe haven.
and that makes my skin crawl.
And posts like that should fall under the same forbidden purview as Loli content, for the exact same reasons.
Can I ask what the stance is for adults intentionally acting as if the were underage regardless of what they look like? Perhaps that could be a line they could agree with?
If the community in question was adorableporn, then this whole thing is crazy. No one in that community looks even remotely underage.
B-but only teenagers can have braces! /s
My 52-yo Filipina gf has lower braces, despite having perfect teeth. When I asked when she was getting them off, she was giggling uncontrollably, “It’s a, uh, fashion thing in the Philippines!”
Who knew?!
I think folks forget just how young people in their early 20s can look.
I think TV just skewed how high schoolers and middle schoolers look to the general populace because, at least back in the day, a lot of them were played by grown ass adults.
I’d guess it’s fauxbait
I just looked at that one too. While the name is unfortunate, no one in there looks remotely underage either.
Totally. It’s just vaguely DDLG stuff
This was my assumption too, i chimed in with maybe a similar opinion to this blahaj.zone mod when that community asked for dialogue. And the people there gave pretty good reasoning that im not mad at. I maybe don’t want to see the community, but I don’t think it makes this instance bad?
I mean I also really don’t want see that community and I do find it more offensive than the deluge of celebrity communities.
That being said, I don’t quite see how it makes this instance bad either. My ‘normal’ account’s instance also defederated a while back, so I just ended up with this as my sex-related alt.
Thats odd. lemmynsfw is pretty restrictive for a porn site.
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My biggest complaint is the number of person-specific subs. Feels like spam.
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Natural evolution of a new site, it has to get content somehow in order to grow, only problem is there’s not yet enough people to get the good content to overpower the spam.
I’ve been blocking a ton too.
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I’ve had to block a crap ton of communities because of the spam and low quality content.
Can’t wait till we can just block instances ourselves…
That was the takeaway people had even before all of this, that the instance is for the “boring” porn, and all the rest is hidden or contained. There was even a .world post saying they knew lemmy was becoming mainstream because all the furries were being “eradicated” in favor of entry level pornhub and onlyfans fluff.
I think it’s good things like this happen. There is a demand for servers with literally no porn for emotional reason, and we now have one more place that is easy to point to for people who share that philosophy. The admin gave the instance more personality. Lemmy needs differentiation.
Yeah it’s odd. I get a weirdly prudent vibe from a lot of communities here on Lemmy whenever it comes to the topic of porn. Idk what’s up with that.
So if an adult has a childlike appearance, they are not an adult; they are considered a kid. What even is this shit?
Not sure why they think that sub is for women trying to look underage. The vast majority do not look like teenagers at all. Most of them are simply giggly.
🤷♂️
I’ve seen both of these posts now, and it leads me to wonder what is the community? because this sounds like the same situation as the jailbait subreddit a long time ago, and if it’s literally a jailbait community then i’d have to agree with their decision to defederate. hosting jailbait porn is gross, equating that position to bodyshaming is insane.
Jailbait is by definition people that are under legal age, or at least pretending to be. If someone is of legal age they by definition cannot be jailbait. The appeal there is the violation of the statutory taboo, the allure of the forbidden fruit. That is not OK and we won’t tolerate that.
If a grownup has a round face and is wearing braces, which is the post that I suspect launched this whole kerfluffle, that’s just how they look. I’m not going to tell them that they can’t be sexy, or you that you can’t be into them being sexy, because of their face or their dental work. Now, you can see why someone might be concerned that someone that has braces might be underage, since many people that are underage have braces. But once we’ve confirmed that they aren’t underage, that should be the end of it.
The dude obviously has never seen /r/braceface
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It’s the one named braces here I think. [email protected]
Was it just that one post that caused all this? Honestly I was expecting something way worse not like a single post in a fairly active looking community…
They decided that because they mistook it for CSAM it should be taken down, and the entire community with it.
Because they assumed one image was CSAM.
It’s kinda nuts.
After reading Ada’s post and comments there (not removed, many were), it’s my opinion the admins there wanted to defederate lemmynsfw anyway and this was a convenient excuse.
Regardless, it’s their server. Many users there support the decision. Their right, and if the userbase wants that they’ve chosen the right instance for them. Those who don’t want that outcome will move.
I’m inclined to agree with you. Though I’ll argue that most users over there are agreeing based on a colorful interpretation of what happened, assuming that there is indeed a community based around legal porn meant to look like CSAM… which doesn’t appear to be the case at all. Look at the community in question ([email protected]) and you’ll notice a lack of anything encouraging people to present as underage.
Adults can be, and often are, adorable.
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I wish one side would just post the chat logs between them to clear the air on what really happened.
I’ve seen it. IMO the side panel explicitly says “childlike” and I can see some might have a problem with that. It suggests the purpose Ada objected to over there. And I think mods and admins might want to change that text such that it makes no reference to underage anyone in the context of porn.
Clearly, all participants are over 18. Good.
I’m the new mod of a few hours at [email protected] , and i have nothing to hide.
See pinned post https://lemmynsfw.com/post/419923 and comments as I was trying to update the community sidebar from a single line to what you see there now, and get feedback. I even have a “under construction” disclaimer.
Btw, the reference came as I was cut/paste from here https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/adorable
Did they change it? I don’t see what you’re saying is there.
I understand the knee jerk reaction… Doesn’t federation mean they are potentially possessing copies of that content, hosting it, by being federated?
So, yes. Their instance would have copies of content viewed by their users. That said, they didn’t defederate because of CSAM, which would make perfect sense. They defederated because they made an incorrect assumption, and then wanted an entire community nuked because of that assumption… even after they were corrected.
The moment things were made clear, they should have said “oh okay, our bad.” But instead they doubled down.
But if you had the anxiety and fear in your heart that boots were about to kick in your door, and hell, that you are facilitating the consumption of casm , wood a few DMs really put you at ease?
Empathetically assume you had already accepted the worst was occuring, I believe it would be very hard to adjust course and sleep at night
But if you had the anxiety and fear in your heart that boots were about to kick in your door, and hell, that you are facilitating the consumption of csam , would a few DMs really put you at ease?
Empathetically assume you had already accepted the worst was occuring, I believe it would be very hard to adjust course and sleep at night
Honestly, I don’t know how the law would handle this kind of situation. But in my mind, the only time you’re in legal hot water is when (a) there is actual CSAM involved, and (b) nothing is done to prevent that association.
In this case, (a) was proven to be false. So there’s no concern. But if it had been the case, then defederation makes sense.
Otherwise, there’s no reason to federate at all. Anyone can post CSAM on any instance at any time. There’s nothing in place to detect it, nothing in place to handle it other than manual moderation. That’s just a hard fact of lemmy instance hosting.
Doesn’t federation mean they are potentially possessing copies of that content, hosting it, by being federated?
Media isn’t replicated. Lemmy is a link aggregator, posts include links to content and that is what is replicated. The fact that instances let you upload images directly does make that a bit confusing but if you look at a post from one instance on another the posts link is still the image on the original instance and is fetched from there. The only local media from federated instances are the thumbnails that are generated and stored locally. That’s still a problem in the instance of some illegal content but less so.
I’m not sure that’s equivalent comparison. I’m not sure of the community either, but my understanding is that everyone involved is an adult.
R/jailbait was hosting sexualized content of literal children.
This is closer to blocking a community because you feel that the models under the “teen” category look too young, even though they are all technically adults.
Yeah that’s about the size of it.
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Probably actually /c/fauxbait
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I had this question too. It was adorableporn. It is not remotely comparable to r/jailbait so let’s not jump to conclusions. The lemmynsfw mods are absolutely in the right here.
If it’s the one I saw yes it is jailbait, but curated to only contain adults who just happen to appear underage. I for one think it’s incredibly fucked up, but I’m not on this instance
So much drama about something so silly. If their concerns were valid about the subject models being under age, or trying to appear under age, then that’s one thing, but this is starting it boil down to a difference of opinion on what looks like CSAM…
They say yes, you say no, it’s a whole thing of everyone having an opinion.
That’s fine. Can’t control what others decide to do with their servers. They’re free to defed if they feel that’s the only way to handle it.
IMO, it sucks to see this splintering of the federation over something like this, but it is what it is.
Yeah, like I’m 20 but based on my face some people think I’m 16, and other people don’t. Does that magically make my partner a pedo?
Apparently, according to some, yes.
It’s dumb. But, they have an opinion, so…
💀 honestly, it feels like sometimes they are so strict on it because they want to prove they aren’t
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it doesn’t make you a pedo it just makes you creepy though
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Being creepy is not a crime, calling other people “creepy” just because you don’t like what they do with their lives or how they look is prejudiced though
Everyone has biases, and I don’t think anyone is advocating for it to be a crime
If you look 16 you’ll be too old for someone actually suffering from pedophilia. They are attracted to children before puberty has done its thing.
Even if your partner did find that attractive that would just mean that they, like the grand majority of the population, are attracted to the sexually mature/maturing 16-18 range. Something like 10 years too old to be pedophilia.
This is a statement of fact not a statement of opinion, nor a statement of acceptance or encouragement. I say this preemptively because there are always those commenters who will attack you personally because they’re trying to manufacture outrage. Making it impossible to talk about real world subjects.
It can make pedos attracted to you even though they know you are 20. How. to react to that is of course up to you. But it is something to be aware of.
I think its probably fine, the only reason I look young is just relatively smooth skin and not much facial hair
You might as well argue pouring sugar in your coffee could trigger drug addicts into taking hard drugs again, because white powder.
It’s the same argument. Both are equally ridiculous.
Actual abuse should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. But not because it might have incited someone else to break the law. You need an actual victim, with testimony, to conduct an investigation and a prosecution.
TFW you don’t even know what pedophilia is, but decide to have an opinion on it anyways… ^Of course I’m sure there’s a human out there that through some disease or abnormality never went through puberty, and still appear as if they are prepubescent.^
You are, however, correct in that attraction is involuntary, it is not something one is able to control, and can have attraction forced upon them.
I believe their argument is that the community is a gathering place for stuff that looks like CSAM as opposed to any of the content looking like CSAM or not. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing, but it’s important to represent people’s arguments correctly.
I appreciate this; I don’t disagree with you.
Some would counter with “if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck”; which is a reasonable argument in and of itself. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect that if things are being said that is CSAM affirmative, then it’s possible or even likely, that the individuals in question are probably participating in the viewing, distribution, or even production, of such material.
One of the good things about the internet is that it becomes harder to have a group or community so isolated that it’s not able to be inspected at a moments notice by anyone with an internet connection; Especially if the content is of a questionable or illegal nature, and the perpetrators of that content’s production and distribution are not very intelligent (and bluntly, most don’t seem to be). It becomes harder to “hide in plain sight” as it used to be, especially when trying to further your questionable or illegal goals. At some point those individuals need to poke their head into the public spaces to try to recruit more people who are sympathetic to their goals, and by doing so, they can readily be found, investigated and hopefully charged and imprisoned for their activities.
If there is any CSAM on any lemmy instance, or people perpetrating CSAM via lemmy, I hope the individuals who are engaged in any related activity are caught, charged and imprisoned for their actions.
What’s up with that instance? All I ever see is drama coming from them.
Admins are clearly pants on head stupid and looking for outrage everywhere.
Manufactured outrage is largely to blame for a lot of the cultural war issues that we deal with these days…
Finding something to be outraged at for finding someone to be outraged on behalf of even if the person who you are now acting for has no feelings of the sort. All it is is a brand new form of red herring politics that drains energy from real problems that we could be solving.
It’s self-serving and encourages and even drives toxicity.
It is within their right to defederate from anyone as they please.
Totally. They even have to right to be dead wrong about the reason, which they’ve exercised.
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Well shit. As a horny queer person I am active on both of these instances and I’m not sure how to feel about this.
As a horny queer person I, too, wish that this had gone a different way.
If you really want to you can just make an account on either side of the divide. They’re free.
I actually already have accounts on both. It’s just one of those weird things of federation that I can’t see one side from my account on the other anymore.
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The thing I don’t get is they seem to host plenty of nsfw material themselves that would fall under that category of “child-like”. I’m not going to argue the specifics on where the line should be drawn, but I feel like they should at least moderate their own communities properly before such action against content that’s no worse than theirs
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