One of the admins at lemmy.blahaj.zone asked us to purge a community and all of its users because they thought it was full of child sexual abuse material, aka CSAM, fka kiddy porn. We assured them that we had checked this comm thoroughly and we were satisfied that all of the models on it were of age.
The admin then demanded we purge the comm because they mistook it for CSAM, and claimed that the entire point of the community was to make people think it was CSAM. We vehemently disagreed that that was in fact the point of the community, but they decided to defederate from us anyway. That is of course their choice, but we will not purge our communities or users because someone else makes a mistake of fact, and then lays the responsibility for their mistake at our feet.
If someone made a community intended to fool people into thinking it was kiddy porn, that would be a real problem. If someone of age goes online and pretends – not roleplays, but pretends with intent to deceive – to be a child and makes porn, that is a real problem. Nobody here is doing that.
One of the reasons we run our instance the way that we do is that we want it to be inclusive. We don’t body shame, and we believe that all adults have a right to sexual expression. That means no adult on our instance is too thin, fat, bald, masculine, old, young, cis, gay, etc., to be sexy, and that includes adults that look younger than some people think they should. Everyone has a right to lust and to be lusted after. There’s no way to draw a line that says “you can’t like adult people that look like X” without crossing a line that we will not cross.
EDIT: OK, closing this post to new comments. Everything that needs saying has been said. Link to my convo with the blahaj admin here.
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you’d think a trans instance would understand that small bodies/tits don’t mean child porn
should they ban us trans girls with smaller goods because we’re just starting on HRT or aren’t at all???
???
I’ll take “discussions I won’t get into with a transwoman unless I know her incredibly well and probably not even then” for $1000, Alex.
LOL valid
Ditto, well put, thanks.
I really don’t see how being a trans community qualifies one to judge adult content. I think their objection, incorrect as it was, was based on overall aesthetics and framing, not just cup size. Apparently pearl-clutching is universal.
wat
A Buddhist temple.
ah
Discourse like this sucks. Of course they are free to defederate but presenting this server as a place that allows abusive material is a gross misrepresentation.
I’m assuming the post in question was the one of imcherryblossom. Two seconds of Googling shows that they are a OnlyFans/Fansly model and proves they are above age, and she pretty clearly looks it too imo.
Equating that post with essentially abuse doesn’t sit right with me. Especially when this server has done a good job imo of banning even borderline content while mod tools improve.
like, damn, let petite people exist and be sexy ;-;
kudos to the admins/mods here as they’ve been absolutely fantastic when I have issues
It sounds to me like they are in the wrong, so I’m not sure what to do other than say, whatever. Not everyone is reasonable.
I’ve posted it a few times in the past few minutes, but I think this is the perfect example of how and why the Fediverse works. The Blaha moderators are trying to make a safe space for everyone, with a special focus on those who slip through the cracks. I’m actually surprised they stayed federated as long as they did with LemmyNSWW. I think they reached out with the best intentions, and just didn’t know how to respond with the info given, and that went a little viral. But, like I said, they should have deferated a while ago due their being NSFW content as default.
As requested, the correspondence between me and the blahaj admin, posted with her permission. It started with this message (her* original message is on the bottom, my reply is on top):
- I had used “they” for Ada earlier, which was mistaken. My apologies.
Okay… so it was adorableporn.
They are clearly wrong. Glad to have that settled.
Right? I don’t think they know how long that community has been a thing. I remember it for at least most of the time I was on reddit too…which was just over 10 years so it’s been around for a hot minute.
At this point Ada apparently had some communication with @[email protected] on Matrix, to which I was not privy. He told me, and I said that I had responded to Ada via Lemmy message. He had to step away, so I took over correspondence with Ada via Matrix.
Well, I’m not familiar with who Ada is before this, but it honestly just sounds like she it’s taking a very hard gut-felt position on simulated child porn, and explicitly refusing to consider the problematic implications of her gut feeling. Consenting adults of any body type can and should be able to be “adorable” as a kink or non-kink nudity or other expression. Even if I completely understand the need to heavily dissuade CSAM, that sub just doesn’t fit that.
It looks like the turn in the conversation was the use of “mistake.” It was accurate but clearly triggered Ada and she stopped listening at that point. I’m sure she is a good person worthy of respect, but she’s in the wrong and I hope she reconsiders.
If you see how she runs her instance it’s no surprise. I’m sure the ban list for their instance is long and will eventually include the entire fediverse.
Fun fact, if you click the “Instances” button in the bottom right of the page on any instance, you can see what other instances it’s connected with, and if you scroll down far enough, which ones are blocked/defederated.
For reference, the instance we’re on, lemmynsfw, has 4 instances blocked.
That exchange is absolutely bonkers. I’m sorry but I have far less respect for Ada after reading that text exchange. Glad I don’t use that instance.
To be clear, Ada has her own imperatives and her own community, and I’m not here to judge how she runs her instance. lemmy.blahaj.zone means a lot to a lot of people, and as a queer weirdo myself I appreciate that a place like it exists on the lemmyverse.
Hey, you’re an instance admin and this kind of collegial statement is entirely appropriate given your role here.
Me? I’m a newbie here. I don’t have much to lose. My assessment of that exchange is: she bonkers. But that’s just me.
You had handled this as perfectly and professionally as one could.
It is unfortunate that she could not accept your reasoning and still chose to defederate.
I think your goof was the “I can’t be held accountable for your mistake of fact”. I believe they’re clearly the one in the wrong regardless though.
It sucks but it is what it is.
I think it’s been an interesting debate. You both make good points. Ads about how “it’s similar to Loli in that it is trying to look underaged” and you with “we don’t discriminate against youthful looking adults”.
I guess I see it like DDLG kinks. I find it gross. I can see why people would want to ban it because they say they’re pretending to do something illegal like CSAM, but a lot of links pretend to do something illegal. BDSM pretends to tie people up and torture them but people don’t look at it and say “hey, you’re intentionally trying to look like you’re torturing people against their wills”.
People seem to have a gut reaction to illegal things with children moreso than illegal things with adults and I guess that’s why some people have this reaction to wanting to “purge” communities like that as opposed to ones that do things like CNC, BDSM, etc. But hey, as long as everyone involved is an adult and consenting that’s totally fine.
I found that “mistake of fact” retort hilarious.
She obviously took it as a personal insult, but the whole debate is based on her own mistaken identification. So it is hard to address the topic without also seeming to target the person.
Huge respect for the professionalism you’ve shown through this situation and in the way you run your instance. The quality of the content here is already impressive, and it’s been the thing that’s allowed me to cut my last cord with Reddit. Cheers.
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Echoing the statements elsewhere here, you handled yourself very well, and it’s quite a different primary source representation from what was being described on their announcement post of why they were defederating.
Why do those images stay the same small, almost unreadable (to my eyes) size no matter how far I zoom in?
As far as the back and forth, to be honest both sides are right after browsing that community.
I took a quick glance at the community in question, and while theres a lot of people who are clearly adults and being adorable… they shouldnt be prevented or banned for being adorable adults making porn… But there was also, just from my quick glance, several posts that leaned super heavily into looking underage and look barely a day over 14. . and I don’t care how much you say they are verified and over 18, The people coming here looking at those pics arent thinking that. All they are thinking is they found a pedo safe haven.
and that makes my skin crawl.
And posts like that should fall under the same forbidden purview as Loli content, for the exact same reasons.
Why do you care if an 18+ year old who looks youthful does NSFW stuff? Take an extreme example, what if Hasbulla did nudes? He is 21 but looks extremely young. I can’t see how telling him he isn’t allowed to make nude content because of his appearance is anything other than ableist and body shaming. You don’t have to like the content or even like the people who would look at it to think the content is acceptable.
If everyone is a consenting adult then everything is fine.
Its real life lolicon, and should be banned for the same reasons that that lolicon is banned. It doesn’t matter if shes actually 300 years old if she looks like a 12 year old. Its literally the same shit, people getting off to the fantasy/idea of a child, trying desperately to hide themselves behind the argument of “its just a drawing!” or “they’re really an adult!”.
Anyone would mistake those 2-3 images for child porn. Just looking at them made my skin crawl, and thats after the admins claimed they were verified, and your argument shows thats all you care about. You don’t care about community. You don’t care about protecting the website. You care about keeping your pseudo-maybe-wont-get-you-thrown-in-prison child porn.
if you want that shit, go back to reddit and join Spez.
I’m not subscribed to that community. It’s not my thing. I’m not into Loli either. Frankly, I do see a problem with Loli. I guess to me it is because the Loli “excuse” of “she’s actually 3000 years old but just looks like a child” but then they proceed to portray them exactly as someone would portray a child. They (generally, I’m sure someone has counter examples) don’t portray them as some wizened elderly woman in a child’s body. That’s why Loli generally feels disgusting to me.
Age verification is the correct thing to do. In the broader internet where things are less strict I’m sure you can find actual underage actors (who are possibly even being trafficked) where it could be avoided with proper age verification. Frankly I think that’s just a super important thing (even apart from this specific discussion). An assumption I’m making (and I guess everyone is) is that the admins’ age verification is adequate. So, assuming it is, I don’t see a problem with allowing creators who appear young to make NSFW content of themselves. If it’s not adequate then there’s a much more important discussion that needs to be had. Based on some of the sticky posts over the past few weeks it seems like they’re serious about it.
To your point, a lot of content makes my skin crawl. I just ignore it. If there’s any I think is actually illegal I’d report it. Maybe I haven’t seen the specific ones you’re talking about so maybe that’s why I don’t feel the same way. I briefly went to the community when I heard about this and just now to see what the fuss was and it just seemed like legal but youthful looking people. Or just folks in their mid twenties just trying to look cute or wholesome. I didn’t see anything that makes me feel the need to report anything as CSAM. That’s just me. I believe you should report content you think is CSAM, I’m not trying to say you shouldn’t.
I know I said it before but I really do view this whole thing similar to folks who may not understand forms of kink are consensual. It’s not a one-to-one thing, but it is similar. Seeing a consensual rape-play session may make people question what the fuck is happening and may make their skin crawl. But if everyone is consenting then it’s fine. I understand why people would have a hard time accepting that (especially if they themselves have been abused).
Lookism is gross, as long as people are grown adults it doesn’t matter what they look like nor should it ever matter
We both know you’re not looking at someone who looks 12 and thinking “oh my god, what an adult” while you’re cranking it, so miss me with that fake enlightened-reddit lookism shit.
What’s up with that instance? All I ever see is drama coming from them.
Admins are clearly pants on head stupid and looking for outrage everywhere.
Manufactured outrage is largely to blame for a lot of the cultural war issues that we deal with these days…
Finding something to be outraged at for finding someone to be outraged on behalf of even if the person who you are now acting for has no feelings of the sort. All it is is a brand new form of red herring politics that drains energy from real problems that we could be solving.
It’s self-serving and encourages and even drives toxicity.
It’s so fucking pathetic. You know these people are insufferable little whiners in real life.
ahem skirt on head
It’s 2023. Women are allowed to wear pants if they want to.
Good point!
we live in a postpants world
After reading your post over at lemmynsfw, it’s pretty clear they were looking for a rationale to defederate and would have done that no matter what you did to prevent it.
You made the right choice if with an unfortunate outcome.
I don’t know if that’s true. I mean, maybe? Or maybe they just don’t want to see certain things and if so, that’s their prerogative. Some people may call this a platitude, but I truly think that’s the beauty of the Fediverse – diverse views, diverse approaches, diverse comfort levels.
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have they defined “big titties”?
“I’ll know 'em when I see em.”
Not authoritarian at all.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Open up for your federally mandated titty check! Those looking for a young-presenting titty exception line up with completed forms!”
That’s insane
Wait, ok I need a link to the law or an article about it. That sounds too ridiculous to be true
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That’s insaaaaane. I mean, the US is too, but in a different way. A cups and squirting both being banned is wild
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_Australia
Just read some of that shit. Hentai cartoons and some 19th century writing.
this community (adorableporn) is allowed on reddit and has 2.1m members there. why would you try to be more holy than the pope?
if it’s ok for reddit and every ad company, then maybe this comm isn’t that bad
maybe that admin was just flustered that their CSAM allegation was wrong and were unable to stop their demands from that point.
if that admin actually believes in their allegations: you can’t ban young adults from presenting themselves in a sexpositive way.
aren’t femboys also the same thing? it is a community of people that bases their identity on having youthful girlish looks. being “adorable” is also a goal of them.
I posted this a few minutes ago, but I think this is a great example of how the Fediverse should work. That instance had issues, they expressed them and the Admins of this instance did their due diligence. The other instance defederated as is their right, and if any of their users still want to participate, they can spin up a new account here, or on any number of other servers. I think this is true free speech in action, the posters haven’t been banned, blocked or told to stop. The ones with the problem have removed themselves from the conversation.
the removed themselves from a lot more conversations than simply the adorableporn one.
i don’t think this is how the fediverse should work, you have a problem with one community, you block the entire instance for all your users.
From what i understand the blahaj admins had no problems with the other communities here, but the entire instance is blocked there now.
nsfw content is always an afterthought tho on social media and always gets cut down in some way for the greater platform. that’s why i value the ability to make an account here a lot.
I’m sorry if you though I disagreed with you. I have no interest in the content in question. I don’t personally like it, or agree with it. I also don’t want it banned, blocked, or censored. I’m a middle aged gay guy, and I have most of this instance blocked since I only want to interact with other gay men. Thats literally free speech. Your users can post/say what want, if it offends anyone/they can remove themselves from said content via blocking or reporting.
Edit:
Also, blaha doesn’t allow downvotes because that could discourage people from posting and getting support when needed. So it’s impossible to see how far allies have reported and downvoted the assholes trying to hurt the innocent.
If the community in question was adorableporn, then this whole thing is crazy. No one in that community looks even remotely underage.
B-but only teenagers can have braces! /s
My 52-yo Filipina gf has lower braces, despite having perfect teeth. When I asked when she was getting them off, she was giggling uncontrollably, “It’s a, uh, fashion thing in the Philippines!”
Who knew?!
I think folks forget just how young people in their early 20s can look.
I think TV just skewed how high schoolers and middle schoolers look to the general populace because, at least back in the day, a lot of them were played by grown ass adults.
I’d guess it’s fauxbait
This was my assumption too, i chimed in with maybe a similar opinion to this blahaj.zone mod when that community asked for dialogue. And the people there gave pretty good reasoning that im not mad at. I maybe don’t want to see the community, but I don’t think it makes this instance bad?
I mean I also really don’t want see that community and I do find it more offensive than the deluge of celebrity communities.
That being said, I don’t quite see how it makes this instance bad either. My ‘normal’ account’s instance also defederated a while back, so I just ended up with this as my sex-related alt.
So if an adult has a childlike appearance, they are not an adult; they are considered a kid. What even is this shit?
Hey, this Stanford Report on CSAM in the Fediverse might explain why instance admins are nervous about even the appearance of illicit content.
https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:vb515nd6874/20230724-fediverse-csam-report.pdf
That’s valid, but Ada didn’t mention anything about the legalese, and specifically said it’s not about the technicalities and more about her personal beliefs
It’s also quite weird that she was making this statement about that completely innocent comm
The clear intent is to appeal to people looking for underage porn
when it might’ve otherwise been valid for fauxbait; that’s an actually concerning comm, though the pics there are clearly watermarked with and taken from well known adult sites at least.
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fyi, the current Stanford President just resigned after he was caught falsifying research data
OK. But that has nothing to do with this report. Is he listed as one of the authors?
Correct. The president’s specialty was biology, and the authors of the report are in the internet observatory department.
He oversaw the internet observatory
it very much is relevant, also one of the authors is David Thiel, the POS who turned facebook into a conservative hellhole
It means I’d question anything Stanford does for awhile and take it with a grain of salt, the report itself is also deeply flawed.
I took the trouble to read the report. What in there is deeply flawed?
Not sure why they think that sub is for women trying to look underage. The vast majority do not look like teenagers at all. Most of them are simply giggly.
🤷♂️
Beehaw and others doesn’t have problems with communities, but Blahaj somehow found something wrong. Strange.
This is genuine issue with the fediverse. Many instances could gang up and defederate from an instance and all the voices on that instances are essentially censored, like a typical centralised social media
So much drama about something so silly. If their concerns were valid about the subject models being under age, or trying to appear under age, then that’s one thing, but this is starting it boil down to a difference of opinion on what looks like CSAM…
They say yes, you say no, it’s a whole thing of everyone having an opinion.
That’s fine. Can’t control what others decide to do with their servers. They’re free to defed if they feel that’s the only way to handle it.
IMO, it sucks to see this splintering of the federation over something like this, but it is what it is.
Yeah, like I’m 20 but based on my face some people think I’m 16, and other people don’t. Does that magically make my partner a pedo?
Apparently, according to some, yes.
It’s dumb. But, they have an opinion, so…
💀 honestly, it feels like sometimes they are so strict on it because they want to prove they aren’t
Honestly, while there was a lot of progress on calling out abuse and exploitation, everything around teenagers has gotten so charged that not vocally decrying anything that is even in the neighborhood is enough to get piled on. Pornhub now pretends the teen category doesn’t exist in their research analytics, most search engines block porn searches for teen, even though it’s always referred to legal 18/19 year olds (or late twenties depending on how petite they are).
Like, I don’t miss “creepy uncles” being a thing that everyone brushed off, but this hair trigger response is way too much.
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it doesn’t make you a pedo it just makes you creepy though
Being creepy is not a crime, calling other people “creepy” just because you don’t like what they do with their lives or how they look is prejudiced though
Everyone has biases, and I don’t think anyone is advocating for it to be a crime
If you look 16 you’ll be too old for someone actually suffering from pedophilia. They are attracted to children before puberty has done its thing.
Even if your partner did find that attractive that would just mean that they, like the grand majority of the population, are attracted to the sexually mature/maturing 16-18 range. Something like 10 years too old to be pedophilia.
This is a statement of fact not a statement of opinion, nor a statement of acceptance or encouragement. I say this preemptively because there are always those commenters who will attack you personally because they’re trying to manufacture outrage. Making it impossible to talk about real world subjects.
It can make pedos attracted to you even though they know you are 20. How. to react to that is of course up to you. But it is something to be aware of.
You might as well argue pouring sugar in your coffee could trigger drug addicts into taking hard drugs again, because white powder.
It’s the same argument. Both are equally ridiculous.
Actual abuse should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. But not because it might have incited someone else to break the law. You need an actual victim, with testimony, to conduct an investigation and a prosecution.
TFW you don’t even know what pedophilia is, but decide to have an opinion on it anyways… ^Of course I’m sure there’s a human out there that through some disease or abnormality never went through puberty, and still appear as if they are prepubescent.^
You are, however, correct in that attraction is involuntary, it is not something one is able to control, and can have attraction forced upon them.
I think its probably fine, the only reason I look young is just relatively smooth skin and not much facial hair
I believe their argument is that the community is a gathering place for stuff that looks like CSAM as opposed to any of the content looking like CSAM or not. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing, but it’s important to represent people’s arguments correctly.
