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.

  • ScrollinMyDayAway@lemm.eeEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    This is sick. Kudos to mods for dealing with this garbage. I hope the posters are all hunted down and punished.

    • DudePluto@lemm.ee
      1·
      2 years 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

      • Catradora_Stalinism [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netBannedEnglish
        1·
        2 years 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.

  • zquestz@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Any chance that gravatar support could be implemented? This would allow some basic functionality without hosting content on lemm.ee servers.

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    2 years 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.

  • єχтяανɒgαηт єηzумэ@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Seems like this is still disabled, is it now in play for the foreseeable future? What about setting a time frame in which no images can be posted until it’s surpassed? Or maybe have an approval required for adding the avatar and banner?

    • sunaurus@lemm.eeOP
      2·
      11 months ago

      Hey, this post is quite old, actually you can find the latest info in the sidebar of our front page:

      • Image uploads are enabled 4 weeks after account creation
      • Image upload limit is 500kb per image
      • єχтяανɒgαηт єηzумэ@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        My account is almost 6 weeks old and I’m still unable to upload any images. They all are under 500KB too, this is why I felt it made sense to comment on the old post. Any idea’s what I can do?

  • perishthethought@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Just checking – Is this still in effect?

    I assume this is why I can’t change the banner on the community I moderate (on lemm.ee).

    I totally understand why this had to happen. I’m just looking for a status update.

  • comfortablyglum@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    2 years ago

    Thank you for the efforts you are making. This is a serious situation; more than just dealing with bad actors, you are viewing traumatic images.

    Please, for your sanity and well being, prioritize your self care. Things like this linger in the psyche much longer than you would expect.

      • HelloHotel@lemm.ee
        0·
        2 years ago

        Its a bug in sombodies markdown parsing.

        Your URL was somehow HTML escaped.

        Correct

        …?width=640&height=480

        Incorrect

        …?width=640&height=480

        • Sotuanduso@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          2 years ago

          I uh… don’t know what you mean there. I was just pointing out that the image I posted is hosted externally, so it doesn’t mean I found a bypass to the disabled uploads. It displays fine on the website.

          • HelloHotel@lemm.ee
            0·
            2 years ago

            Some software somwhere has a bug in it and it broke your link, im sorry if i failed to communicate that

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
      0·
      2 years ago

      I’m no expert on this; but I’d assume that it is sometime easy to track them down, and sometimes very hard. Easy if they just do a direct upload from their home internet with a fixed IP address, using a regular lemmy account that they also use for day-to-day stuff. But hard if (for example), they use upload from some coffee shop wifi connection with a throw-away account using some tor / proxy / VPN shenanigans.

    • Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      2 years ago

      That would be a lot of work for admins, but perhaps reporting the CSAM to the FBI or something. I’m pretty ignorant about how that all works.

  • tacofox@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 years ago

    Thank you sir. I appreciate the dedication to the community to subject yourself to the moderation. Hopefully we can squash this before it goes too far, farther than it has anyway…

  • randint@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 years ago

    It’s honestly sad that some well-intentioned laws can be used to attack online platforms.

      • randint@lemm.ee
        0·
        2 years ago

        that shit just shouldn’t be here

        Yes, I agree. Maybe my wording suggested otherwise. But my point was that it wouldn’t be the uploader that’s punished but the instance itself. That’s kinda weird.

    • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Fuck the legal part, I wouldn’t want to stay on platform infested with cp. Thank you so much for all the awesome people combating this <3

  • NXL@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years ago

    How does one disable image uploads on their server? I want to disable it for a while