We unfortunately have to close the !lemmyshitpost community for the time being. We have been fighting the CSAM (Child Sexual Assault Material) posts all day but there is nothing we can do because they will just post from another instance since we changed our registration policy.

We keep working on a solution, we have a few things in the works but that won't help us now.

Thank you for your understanding and apologies to our users, moderators and admins of other instances who had to deal with this.

Edit: @Striker@lemmy.world the moderator of the affected community made a post apologizing for what happened. But this could not be stopped even with 10 moderators. And if it wasn't his community it would have been another one. And it is clear this could happen on any instance.

But we will not give up. We are lucky to have a very dedicated team and we can hopefully make an announcement about what's next very soon.

Edit 2: removed that bit about the moderator tools. That came out a bit harsher than how we meant it. It's been a long day and having to deal with this kind of stuff got some of us a bit salty to say the least. Remember we also had to deal with people posting scat not too long ago so this isn't the first time we felt helpless. Anyway, I hope we can announce something more positive soon.

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[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Not true.

A simple CAPTCHA got rid of a huge set of idiotic script-kiddies. CSAM being what it is, could (and should) result in an immediate IP ban. So if you're "dumb" enough to try to upload a well-known CSAM hash, then you absolutely deserve the harshest immediate ban automatically.

You're pretty much like the story of the economist who refuses to believe that $20 exists on a sidewalk. "Oh, but if that $20 really existed on the sidewalk there, then it would have been arbitraged away already". Well guess what? Human nature ain't economic theory. Human nature ain't cybersecurity.

Idiots will do dumb, easy attacks because they're dumb and easy. We need to defend against the dumb-and-easy attacks, before spending more time working on the harder, rarer attacks.

[–] AustralianSimon@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You don't get their ip when they post from other instances. I'm surprised this hasn't resulted in defed.

[–] anlumo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, my home instance has defederated from lemmy.world due to this, that's why I had to create a local account here.

[–] AustralianSimon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean defedding the instances the CSAM is coming from but also yes.

[–] rolaulten@startrek.website 3 points 1 year ago

I'm sorry but you don't want to use permanent IP bans. Most residential circuits are DHCP meaning banning via IP only has a short term positive effect.

That said automatic scanning of known hashes, and automatically reporting to relevant authorities with relevant details should be doable (provided there is a database somewhere - I honestly have never looked).