Several months ago Beehaw received a report about CSAM (i.e. Child Sexual Abuse Material). As an admin, I had to investigate this in order to verify and take the next steps. This was the first time in my life that I had ever seen images such as these. Not to go into great detail, but the images were of a very young child performing sexual acts with an adult.
The explicit nature of these images, the gut-wrenching shock and horror, the disgust and helplessness were very overwhelming to me. Those images are burnt into my mind and I would love to get rid of them but I don’t know how or if it is possible. Maybe time will take them out of my mind.
In my strong opinion, Beehaw must seek a platform where NO ONE will ever have to see these types of images. A software platform that makes it nearly impossible for Beehaw to host, in any way, CSAM.
If the other admins want to give their opinions about this, then I am all ears.
I, simply, cannot move forward with the Beehaw project unless this is one of our top priorities when choosing where we are going to go.
I’ve tried those methods something like 10 years ago. It didn’t work; people would pose as decent users, then suddenly switch to posting shit when allowed. I’m thinking nowadays, with the use of ChatGPT and similar, those methods would fail even more.
Modern filtering methods for images may be fine(-ish), but won’t stop NSFL and text based stuff.
Blocking VPN access, to a site intended as a safe space, seems contradictory.
Like some else’s free WiFi. Wardriving is still a thing.
That can be easily abused, either manually or through a bot. Reddit has the right idea there, where they have an avatar generator with pre-approved elements. Too bad they’re pretty stifling (and sell the interesting ones as NFTs).