Hello everyone,

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.

  • bigkix
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    10 months ago

    Saw that one post (unfortunately). How come people who spread content like that in the “open” internet (not darkweb) don’t get arrested?

    • El Barto@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I hardly know anything about the subject of the dark web, but my take is, they operate from the dark web. They open temporary email accounts, then free computing or free hosting accounts, or are part of a bot net. The rest is relatively easy.

      Law enforcement monitors the dark web, though, so if they make a stupid move (and they will), they will eventually get caught.

      • Richard@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Will they though? Not necessarily, as no police department can do anything about state terrorism. If Russian hackers attack Western infrastructure, the FBI or whoever cannot go there and arrest them.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I was talking about domestic crimes. But sure, you’re correct, unless it’s considered an act of war.

    • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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      10 months ago

      They would need to be reported with some credible and actionable evidence to the appropriate authorities. Just having the material they are posting isn’t enough. If they are taking precautions, it’s gonna be hard to figure out who and where they are from what the site would be able to log while they use it.

      • T156@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The legal system also takes time. The material could be disseminated fairly widely before an investigation would be started and completed. Especially with bots. Hundreds of bots are a lot faster than a team of humans.

    • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
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      10 months ago

      I’m in the US and grew up here. My dad is a piece of shit pedophile who exploited me for several websites. None on darkweb but at the time, they didn’t really need to be.

      Word got out and cops came to interrogate ME the person who was the victim in this situation. They also blamed me for what was going on (how? I don’t know, I was a teen who was being exploited underage but cops gonna cop) and they basically intimidated me into dropping out of school and taking the blame for my dad because the other option was that I be sent to a home as an orphan.

      My dad got away with a slap on the wrist basically because cops in the US don’t do their job. They even cover for people. I ended up literally running away from home.

      I think the issue is that people see this topic as all outrage - I mean, look at the comments here. Everyone is so mad they can’t even think straight. And I’m personally noticing that some of the outrage doesn’t even seem to be directed at the right people. Like everyone is super willing to shit on pedos left and right but I wonder if they would be willing to listen to someone who has been knee deep in this shit before and were innocent because they were being exploited by a pedophile.

      Like a lot of comments say “disgusting” but then don’t say anything about how the person that it happened to must feel. Everyone’s upset they saw something but they don’t seem to be upset about who they saw it happening to.

      Like I wonder who they think hurts more in this situation. The person who was made into a victim or the people who just saw it happen.

      • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        First, thank you for your comment and I’m glad you posted it.

        Second, I want to take a moment to clarify what people mean when they say “disgusting” - at least for me - it’s not a matter of “oh my god I saw something awful, my day is ruined, that’s disgusting”, it’s instead “oh my god I can’t believe that happened, that’s disgusting”. The nuance is that the “disgust” is against the people who allowed it to happen - The perpetrators, the cops who did nothing, the people who shared it, and the world that allowed it to happen.

        Again, thank you for sharing your story, it’s a great reminder of what the actual issue at hand is. Much love!

        • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
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          10 months ago

          Exactly, that was my point. People are upset with the perpetrators - and no one really seems to be empathizing with the victims.

      • sunaurusA
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        10 months ago

        I’m sorry for your experience and I hope you’re doing better now. It’s very important to note that the major victims in this “attack” are absolutely the abused children. That’s exactly what makes this the most disgusting attack on Lemmy to date.

    • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Just had like 90 (probably unrelated) arrests in one state in Germany. There are just way too man to arrest them all.

    • Hello Hotel@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Darkweb as a proxy to the clear web. Its a ligitimate tool used for horriffic things somtimes. Tor is a huge double edge sword.

      If these people were distrobuting, the most open stratigy would hide in plain sight. Like say the dark corners of some well known mainstream, but negligent social media site. These people are here to terrorize.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Usually they do, eventually (even on the darkweb).

      Though it does take time to pin them down sometimes because many criminals take steps to hide their identities and make it very difficult.

      Lots of people though are caught easily and quickly, hopefully these guys will be like that and will get caught quickly and put away for good.

    • MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Because it’s still relatively difficult to track people back from a lot of this stuff, especially considering that those people almost always take significant measures to not be associated