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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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This is one of the reasons I'm hesitant to start my own instance - the moderation load expands exponentially as you scale, and without some sort of automated tool to keep CSAM content from being posted in the first place, I can only see the problem increasing. I'm curious to see if anyone knows of lemmy or mastodon moderation tools that could help here.
That being said, it's worth noting that the same Standford research team reviewed Twitter and found the same dynamic in play, so this isn't a problem unique to Mastodon. The ugly thing is that Twitter has (or had) a team to deal with this, and yet:
So going forward, such comparisons will be impossible because Twitter has locked down its API. So yes, the Fediverse has a problem, the same one Twitter has, but Twitter is actively ignoring it while reducing transparency into future moderation.
If you run your instance behind cloudlare, you can enable the CSAM scanning tool which can automatically block and report known CSAMs to authorities if they're uploaded into your server. This should reduce your risk as the instance operator.
https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/reference/csam-scanning/
Sweet - thanks - that's a brilliant tool. Bookmarked.
Thanks for the comment - I wasn't aware of a cloudflare controversy in play, and went through your links and the associated wikipedia page. It's interesting to me, as someone who previously ran a public forum, to see them struggle with the same issues surrounding hate speech I did on a larger scale.
I agree with your thoughts on a centralized service having that much power, although Cloudfare does have a number of competitors, so I'm not quite seeing the risk here, save for the fact that Cloudfare appears to be the only one offering CSAM filtering (will have to dig in further to confirm). The ActivityPub blocking for particular instances is concerning, but I don't see a source on that - do you have more detail?
However, I disagree with your statement on handling non-solicited content - from personal experience, I can confidently state that there are some things that get submitted that you just shouldn't subject another human too, even if it's only to determine whether or not it should be deleted. CSAM falls under this category in my book. Having a system in place that keeps you and your moderators from having to deal with it is invaluable to a small instance owner.
Thanks -that's the detail I was looking for. Definitely food for thought.
I trust CloudFlare a helluva lot more than I trust most of these companies discussed on this thread. Their transparency is second to none.
I think the common sense solution is creating instances for physically local communities (thus keeping the moderation overhead to a minimum) and being very judicious about which instances you federate your instance with.
That being said, It's only a matter of time before moderation tools are created for streamlining the process.
My instance is for members of a certain group, had to email the owner a picture of your card to get in. More instances should exist like that. General instances are great but it's nice knowing all the people on my local are in this group too.
@Arotrios @corb3t
They want to intimidate you with #ForTheChildren
Sounds like they succeeded
Nah, not intimidated. More that I ran a sizeable forum in the past and I know what what a pain in the ass this kind of content can be to deal with. That's why I was asking about automated tools to deal with it. The forum I ran got targeted by a bunch of Turkish hackers, and their one of their attack techniques involved a wave of spambot accounts trying to post crap content. I wasn't intimidated (fought them for about two years straight), but by the end of it I was exhausted to the point where it just wasn't worth it anymore. An automated CSAM filter would have made a huge difference, but this was over a decade ago and those tools weren't around.
@Arotrios @corb3t
Totally reasonable. If (when) I create my own instance it will be very locked down re who I allow to join
Not sure why you’re continually @ replying to me? Is discussion around activitypub content moderation an issue for you?