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Ada @lemmy.blahaj.zone

lemmynsfw.com has been defederated

Edit - This is a post to the meta group of Blåhaj Lemmy. It is not intended for the entire lemmyverse. If you are not on Blåhaj Lemmy and plan on dropping in to offer your opinion on how we are doing things in a way you don't agree with, your post will be removed.

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A user on our instance reported a post on lemmynsfw as CSAM. Upon seeing the post, I looked at the community it was part of, and immediately purged all traces of that community from our instance.

I approached the admins of lemmynsfw and they assured me that the models with content in the community were all verified as being over 18. The fact that the community is explicitly focused on making the models appear as if they're not 18 was fine with them. The fact that both myself and one a member of this instance assumed it was CSAM, was fine with them. I was in fact told that I was body shaming.

I'm sorry for the lack of warning, but a community skirting the line trying to look like CSAM isn't a line I'm willing to walk. I have defederated lemmynsfw and won't be reinstating it whilst that community is active.

359 comments

  • I think both instance admins have a valid stance on the matter. lemmynsfw appears to take reports very seriously and if necessary does age verification of questionable posts, something that likely takes a lot of time and effort. Blahaj Lemmy doesn't like the idea of a community that's dedicated to "adults that look or dress child-like". While I understand the immediate (and perhaps somewhat reactionary) concern that might raise, is this concern based in fact, or in emotion?

    Personally I'm in the camp of "let consenting adults do adult things", whether that involves fetishes that are typically thought of as gross, dressing up in clothes or doing activities typically associated with younger ages, or simply having a body that appears underage to the average viewer. As the lemmynsfw admin mentioned, such persons have the right to lust and be lusted after, too. That's why, as a society, we decided to draw the line at 18 years old, right?

    I believe the concern is not that such content is not supposed to exist or be shared, but rather that it's collected within a community. And I think the assumption here is that it makes it easy for "certain people" to find this content. But if it is in fact legal, and well moderated, then is there a problem? I don't believe there is evidence that seeing such content could change your sexual preferences. On the other hand, saying such communities should not exist could send the wrong message, along the lines of "this is weird and should not exist", which might be what was meant with "body shaming".

    I'm trying to make sense of the situation here and possibly try to deescalate things, as I do believe lemmynsfw approach to moderation otherwise appears to be very much compatible with Blahaj Lemmy. Is there a potential future where this decision is reconsidered? Would there be some sort of middle-ground that admins from both instances could meet and come to an understanding?

    • is this concern based in fact, or emotion?

      Ada was clear in another comment thread that yes, emotion was absolutely involved in her decision. That isn’t a bad thing. Why is there a social attitude that decision-making is only valid if it’s cold and unfeeling?

      Personally I’m in the camp of “let consenting adults do adult things”

      Me too. I don’t think anyone is arguing against that. Anyone can still access LemmyNSFW’s content elsewhere, Blahaj Zone simply isn’t going to relay it anymore because some of it is incompatible with Ada’s goals in nurturing this community.

      But if it is in fact legal, and well moderated, then is there a problem?

      Yes. Legality has nothing to do with acceptability. This instance already bans lots of content that doesn’t actually violate any laws. It’s a judgment call.

      • The reason I brought up emotion in my reply was because I've felt that the lemmynsfw admins have been able to explain their decision quite reasonably and seemed to be open to conversation, wheras Ada was set on one goal and upon finding disagreement, wasn't in the right mindset to continue a constructive conversation. Which, to be fair, due to the nature of the content, is understandable.

        If the content that the Blahaj Lemmy admins are concerned about are limited to certain communities, and part of the issue is the concentration of content in said communities in the first place (at least, as I speculated in my original reply), then I don't quite understand why blocking these communities only isn't something that was considered, rather than defederating the entire instance. I do respect Blahaj Lemmy's decision not to want to host such content. Or is there some technical limitation that I'm not aware of?

      • Why is there a social attitude that decision-making is only valid if it’s cold and unfeeling?

        Probably because everyone agrees that we don't make the best decisions when emotional? In fact we tend to make our worst decisions when emotional? There's a pretty significant difference between society judging people for being emotional, and society disapproving of emotional decisions. Because people making significant choices when they aren't thinking clearly is pretty obviously a bad idea.

        Yes. Legality has nothing to do with acceptability. This instance already bans lots of content that doesn’t actually violate any laws. It’s a judgment call.

        And yet teen porn is one of the most popular categories around. This sounds like a subcategory confined to a single community, and precisely what the block function is for. There's a pretty big difference between Exploding Heads and a single disliked community.

        Edit: After finally seeing a link to the lemmynsfw discussion, it's not a kink community or anything fringe. It's literally a community around cute pornstars.

    • Reminds me of a lot of the debates around kink at pride/ddlg kink stuff. The latter is really not my thing and makes me uncomfortable, but I recognise that that's a personal thing between me and my partners that I can't, and shouldn't, police among others.

      There's also ethical debates to be had on porn in places like Lemmy/pornhub/etc. -- we can't know that the person has consented to being posted, or that they have recourse to get it taken down and stop it being spreaded if they do not.

      Then there's the realpolitik of, regardless of ethics, whether it's better to have porn of this type in visible, well moderated communities, or whether it's better to try to close off ethically dubious posting.

      It's one I don't really have squared off in my head quite yet. Similarly with kink at pride; I've read about the historic importance of kinksters and recognise that, but at the same time I want there to be a space where queer kids can be involved with pride without being exposed to kink. Is that just prudish social norms talking? Idk; I'm still working it through.

      • For what it's worth, I feel like while society has become more socially accepting of people being different (imperfectly, but we have), at least in the US we've become more and more prudish when it comes to sex itself. Part of the changing era has led to a reduction in exploitation and things that were generally viewed as sketchy, but not all that big of deal (kids inheriting porn mags, sexual harassment, imbalances in power), where now sketchy behavior is quickly called out.

        That said, I feel like a lot of hard conversations have been completely avoided because they'd be awkward and uncomfortable and instead we just pretend they aren't there.

        Like in theory, anyone under 18 in the US can't legally see so much as a titty (unless it's art), read sexually explicit material, or see a movie or tv show with explicit content. And then, literally nobody wants to talk to teenagers about sex. I watched a reddit thread eat itself alive because a dad was furious that his wife had bought their daughter a dildo after he had confiscated her laptop when catching her looking at them and asked his wife to deal with it. People were calling for her to be reported for sexual abuse, while actual women were being attacked for sharing their own experiences as teens. Things just seem a little crazy.

        People are so uncomfortable with the concept that they want to disappear anything that reminds them that 18 isn't actually a magical division between childhood and adulthood. And then you have this thread, where lemmynsfw was banned because a community sharing "cute" pornstars was a step too far despite being actual professional adults. Idk, it seems exactly like Australia's whole thing where they started banning pornstars in their late twenties because they have small tits as part of a project to "fight" child porn.

  • I'm not on this instance, but thank you for being so swift and resolute in your actions. Happy to see all due caution is being taken. Not so happy that such a community made it's way here to the fediverse. Hopefully I won't see any of it while doomscrolling.

  • I enjoy NSFW content, but I certainly don’t want to stumble into “how close to CSAM can we get while staying technically legal?” content. And the bullshit lie about this being “body shaming” pisses me off.

    This admin decision obviously isn’t up for a vote, but it’s just so obviously the right call. Thank you Ada for handling this, and I’m sorry (in the Canadian way, not the guilty way 😉🇨🇦) you had to see any of that.

  • I guess Trans Littles can just go fuck off then? One of the biggest Trans comics artist is openly a little. Why are we in the business of regulating what consenting adults do?

    • Don’t be disingenuous. Genuine consent practices also consider that not everyone else consents to witnessing their play, so they don’t do it where it’s not welcomed. And it’s not welcomed on Blahaj Zone, in this case. That’s all.

      • Exscuse me but you're the one being disengenious, a NSFW instance had what!? Porn!? Stop the fucking presses. Are we going to defederate from all porn instances or just the ones you find icky? Where can I post my objection to having to be subjected to porn at all?

      • I think it's a little more complicated than that. If it were just a matter of not consenting to seeing their play, that community would be blocked. But instead, the entire instance has been defederated, so that's not really a fair comparison.

    • No one is looking at a little and thinking that they're physically 15.

      • I wrote a comment but got more aggressive than I intended. My overall point though is there are young looking adults, there are old looking kids. Making a sweeping statement like you did is just wrong

  • If I believe the mod of the community in question is telling the truth, Seems like the incident in question was just a misunderstanding. The community name is ::: spoiler spoiler adorableporn :::

    I will refer to this as "the first community" in the following text.

    The mod of the community copy/pasted the dictionary definition from vocabulary.com, which contains the word "childlike".

    IMO, the community in question is not trying to skirt the line of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). In fact, there is a subreddit of the same name which has absolutely nothing to do with people that appear underage.

    That said, the same mod also moderates, and posts to a different community with a concerning name. The spoiler below shows the name and the first three paragraphs of the sidebar as they appear:

    Also, I'm not sure if the timestamps can be trusted, but said mod was instated as the only active mod of the first community at the same time that Ada made this post, which would mean that the mod account could not have been the one that wrote the original sidebar of the first community. Not sure what to make of that. For the sake of balance though, said mod does seem to be doing verifications of the age requirements. Also, the modlog for the first community shows two admin removals from at least 10 days before this debacle, both of which err on the side of caution, so at least the admins to seem to care about enforcing their rules.

    The situation seems very muddy, but I personally don't think the original incident was that big of a deal (assuming the mod is telling the truth). However, I certainly don't blame the blahaj admins for defederating as it's certainly the safest option. Wouldn't want blahaj lemmy to get taken down :| Also happy to see less pron in my feed; I'm too lazy to block the individual /c/. Personal Instance-level blocking can't come soon enough.

  • I don't have an issue with the defederation call, and transparency regarding decisions around defederation is very healthy and good!

    However, one of the more complicated implications of Lemmy's federated structure is that defederation on instances is more of "everybody's business" than it is on Mastodon, since Lemmy instances host communities and not just users. I don't have much sympathy for free speech absolutists who feel the need to frame all defederation as "censorship" or some of form of tyranny, but since it is potentially splitting the user bases of communities on blahaj that folks on other instances have joined, it makes sense for folks on other instances to want their voices to be heard.

    (Obviously, there are constructive and non-constructive ways to do that.)

    This is also why the answer to everything won't be "just run your own instance." It's important that more instances have well-developed and transparent moderation standards both internally and externally, and users will need to be savvy about the moderation landscape when they choose what instances to start communities on. (This will be a little less loaded of a question if/when Lemmy gets the ability to migrate communities.)

    I think there's a lot of "cross that bridge when we come to it" mindset amongst some of the bigger instance admins that is in the long run is much more detrimental than any one defederation call could be.

    • Believe it or not, I agree. It's one of the reasons why I moderate less aggressively on lemmy than I do on the rest of the fediverse. I block/ban users here, for things I would defederate instances over on our main instance.

      But images that look like CSAM are something else again. I'm not going to give leeway to spaces like that. I don't want to be anywhere near NSFW content that can be mistaken for CSAM. I don't want to moderate around it, I don't want to navigate the legalities, and I don't want to be connected to a community that attracts folk looking for porn like that.

      • That makes sense! I think you guys are well ahead of the curve in terms of this stuff compared to most instances, it’s appreciated

    • I could see an argument that, while when all people involved are truly verified to be adults there might not be anything legally wrong and the morality is at least not completely settled as being wrong, the existence of such a community would tend to, on average, attract an audience of people who desire material in which the actors do not merely appear underage. As having such people around doesn't make for a particularly safe community, blocking a space that might attract them makes some sense, even if the space itself doesn't cross the line into illegality.

      • Exactly this

      • I don’t really agree with that idea though. Despite the fact that the community in question didn’t really have anything that looked underage, the idea that pedophiles are going to swarm and start asking for legit CSAM seems misguided.

        Firstly, pedophiles would be no more attracted to a grown adult who looks young, than a person attracted to short people would be attracted to someone who is standing on their knees.

        And secondly, there are steps that do get taken, and have already been taken before, on lemmynsfw to address legitimate instances of CSAM and communities asking for or sharing it.

        That last part seems to put the entire concern to rest, doesn’t it?

  • Ew don't be sorry that's definitely not ok get rid of that nonsense it always struck me as a sketchy domain :/

  • So I'm not entirely sure if this is a coincidence, but I recently reported a post in the community of question, thinking it might be CSAM. Maybe my intentions might be of interest: The post looked as if it was portraying and sexualizing a person under age and that made me uncomfortable. Especially as in my opinion (and understanding) the community in question was not focussed on people looking like children. In my opinion, if a community exists that has that focus, it's gross, but I'm not sure yet what the consequences should be (I'm torn between not wanting to kink-shame and so on and not wanting to promote CSAM(ish) content). As I didn't perceive the community in question as promoting CSAM-like content though, I would have just expected that the specific post be removed and that's it. I'm not entirely sure what to think about the whole instance being defederated now. Also, it's kind of surprising for me that the report went to blåhaj admins and not lemmynsfw ones, but I guess that's ok. Maybe it should automaticly go to both?

    Anyway, it's nice to see that reports are taken seriously (thank you!) and I'm sorry to sea that you're now receiving hate for it.

    • The community in question used "child-like" in their sidebar to describe their acceptable content, and the first post I saw in a report looked like CSAM.

      That, and other random photos of people who looked like they were 15 or 16.

      To me, that's pretty damning, even if they are all 18+.

      Also, it’s kind of surprising for me that the report went to blåhaj admins and not lemmynsfw ones, but I guess that’s ok.

      On lemmy, a report goes to the admins of the instance that the reporter is on. The admins of the instance the reported account is on, the admins of the instance the community is on and the mods of the community

      • That seems like a bad system, since it basically requires every instance to either moderate NSFW content whether they consent to it or not, or defederate and potentially disappoint users who liked having access to NSFW. I probably would have defederated them in your shoes too, since something that's ambiguous as to whether or not it's CSAM would be pretty distressing, but as far as I can tell everyone on the community in question is 18+ and this should never have been brought to your attention anyway, as an admin of a completely different instance.

        I feel like it would make more sense for post reports to only go to the community mods/instance admins on the instance hosting the post, since anything else is going to subject a lot of non-nsfw instance admins to potentially illegal/traumatizing content they didn't sign up to moderate.

359 comments