Edit - This is a post to the meta group of Blåhaj Lemmy. It is not intended for the entire lemmyverse. If you are not on Blåhaj Lemmy and plan on dropping in to offer your opinion on how we are doing things in a way you don’t agree with, your post will be removed.
==
A user on our instance reported a post on lemmynsfw as CSAM. Upon seeing the post, I looked at the community it was part of, and immediately purged all traces of that community from our instance.
I approached the admins of lemmynsfw and they assured me that the models with content in the community were all verified as being over 18. The fact that the community is explicitly focused on making the models appear as if they’re not 18 was fine with them. The fact that both myself and one a member of this instance assumed it was CSAM, was fine with them. I was in fact told that I was body shaming.
I’m sorry for the lack of warning, but a community skirting the line trying to look like CSAM isn’t a line I’m willing to walk. I have defederated lemmynsfw and won’t be reinstating it whilst that community is active.
You must log in or register to comment.
I think both instance admins have a valid stance on the matter. lemmynsfw appears to take reports very seriously and if necessary does age verification of questionable posts, something that likely takes a lot of time and effort. Blahaj Lemmy doesn’t like the idea of a community that’s dedicated to “adults that look or dress child-like”. While I understand the immediate (and perhaps somewhat reactionary) concern that might raise, is this concern based in fact, or in emotion?
Personally I’m in the camp of “let consenting adults do adult things”, whether that involves fetishes that are typically thought of as gross, dressing up in clothes or doing activities typically associated with younger ages, or simply having a body that appears underage to the average viewer. As the lemmynsfw admin mentioned, such persons have the right to lust and be lusted after, too. That’s why, as a society, we decided to draw the line at 18 years old, right?
I believe the concern is not that such content is not supposed to exist or be shared, but rather that it’s collected within a community. And I think the assumption here is that it makes it easy for “certain people” to find this content. But if it is in fact legal, and well moderated, then is there a problem? I don’t believe there is evidence that seeing such content could change your sexual preferences. On the other hand, saying such communities should not exist could send the wrong message, along the lines of “this is weird and should not exist”, which might be what was meant with “body shaming”.
I’m trying to make sense of the situation here and possibly try to deescalate things, as I do believe lemmynsfw approach to moderation otherwise appears to be very much compatible with Blahaj Lemmy. Is there a potential future where this decision is reconsidered? Would there be some sort of middle-ground that admins from both instances could meet and come to an understanding?
is this concern based in fact, or emotion?
Ada was clear in another comment thread that yes, emotion was absolutely involved in her decision. That isn’t a bad thing. Why is there a social attitude that decision-making is only valid if it’s cold and unfeeling?
Personally I’m in the camp of “let consenting adults do adult things”
Me too. I don’t think anyone is arguing against that. Anyone can still access LemmyNSFW’s content elsewhere, Blahaj Zone simply isn’t going to relay it anymore because some of it is incompatible with Ada’s goals in nurturing this community.
But if it is in fact legal, and well moderated, then is there a problem?
Yes. Legality has nothing to do with acceptability. This instance already bans lots of content that doesn’t actually violate any laws. It’s a judgment call.
Why is there a social attitude that decision-making is only valid if it’s cold and unfeeling?
Probably because everyone agrees that we don’t make the best decisions when emotional? In fact we tend to make our worst decisions when emotional? There’s a pretty significant difference between society judging people for being emotional, and society disapproving of emotional decisions. Because people making significant choices when they aren’t thinking clearly is pretty obviously a bad idea.
Yes. Legality has nothing to do with acceptability. This instance already bans lots of content that doesn’t actually violate any laws. It’s a judgment call.
And yet teen porn is one of the most popular categories around. This sounds like a subcategory confined to a single community, and precisely what the block function is for. There’s a pretty big difference between Exploding Heads and a single disliked community.
Edit: After finally seeing a link to the lemmynsfw discussion, it’s not a kink community or anything fringe. It’s literally a community around cute pornstars.
Yeah, see, it’s that conflation of “emotional” and “not thinking clearly” that bothers me. Those aren’t the same thing, despite the dominant cultural narrative to the contrary. Sometimes they go together, sometimes they don’t.
Are they not…? I mean, thinking clearly and intense emotions genuinely don’t go together. Crimes of passion, riots after sports games, getting “carried away” in the heat of the moment. Temporary insanity being an actual legal defense.
There’s a reason that a lot of good advice when handling intense emotions is all about taking a minute to step back and breath, clarify what you’re feeling, accept it, and then express it safely. There’s nothing wrong with being emotional, but arguing that there’s nothing wrong with making decisions while emotionally charged is just a really not good idea. The fact that the acronym for managing intense emotions is STOPP should be a bit telling.
Sometimes they go together, sometimes they don’t.
I read that, I’m just drawing a blank for moments where intense emotions and thinking clearly go well together beyond something like “I saw a bear and ran”.
Just a personal anecdote. I have intense emotions when dealing with transphobia but I think I’m able to think clearly. I think there absolutely are times where intense emotions can cloud thoughts but I beleive the converse isn’t true.
“Intense emotions can interfere with clear thinking” does not imply that “clear thinking is impossible when there are intense emotions”
The reason I brought up emotion in my reply was because I’ve felt that the lemmynsfw admins have been able to explain their decision quite reasonably and seemed to be open to conversation, wheras Ada was set on one goal and upon finding disagreement, wasn’t in the right mindset to continue a constructive conversation. Which, to be fair, due to the nature of the content, is understandable.
If the content that the Blahaj Lemmy admins are concerned about are limited to certain communities, and part of the issue is the concentration of content in said communities in the first place (at least, as I speculated in my original reply), then I don’t quite understand why blocking these communities only isn’t something that was considered, rather than defederating the entire instance. I do respect Blahaj Lemmy’s decision not to want to host such content. Or is there some technical limitation that I’m not aware of?
I don’t quite understand why blocking these communities only isn’t something that was considered, rather than defederating the entire instance
Because I am not ok federating with a space that is ok with content that looks like CSAM. “It’s technically legal” isn’t sufficient in this case.
But whether it’s technically legal is exactly what does or doesn’t make it CSAM. “Looking like” is going to be highly subjective, and I don’t understand how the admins of the other instance are supposed to handle reports, other than to verify whether or not it actually is the case or not.
Are petite looking people not supposed to make explicit content while dressing up cute? Should a trans man not share explicit pictures of himself, because he might look like an underage boy? Do we stop at porn that gives the appearance of someone being young? What about incest or ageplay? Like, what if you or someone else was made sufficiently uncomfortable by some other kind of porn? How do you decide what is and isn’t okay? How do you avoid bias? What would you be telling a model when they ask why you removed their content?
Apologies for going on with this when I’m sure you’re already sick of dealing with this. I had just felt like some of the points I brought up (like in my original reply) were entirely overlooked. Putting effort into an (attempted) thought-out reply doesn’t mean I get to receive a response I was hoping for, but I was at least hoping for something you hadn’t already said elsewhere.
but I was at least hoping for something you hadn’t already said elsewhere.
There is no more to this. I don’t have a list of endless reasons.
The reason is that it looks like CSAM and appeals to folk looking for CSAM. I’m a CSA survivor myself. A space that appeals to folk looking for CSAM isn’t a community that I’m willing to share space with.
I guess Trans Littles can just go fuck off then? One of the biggest Trans comics artist is openly a little. Why are we in the business of regulating what consenting adults do?
No one is looking at a little and thinking that they’re physically 15.
I wrote a comment but got more aggressive than I intended. My overall point though is there are young looking adults, there are old looking kids. Making a sweeping statement like you did is just wrong
Young looking adults also aren’t the issue.
The issue is a community that focuses heavily on models that are framed to look like they’re not adults.
Not adults roleplaying. Not adults that incidentally happen to look younger than they are.
But they are adults, no?
Again, the issue is a community with models that are framed to look like they’re not adults.
There is no scenario where something that can be mistaken for CSAM will have a space here.
And again, these are adults on an instance that was explicitly designated for NSFW works. Defederating was entirely within your right but these justifications seem really poorly thought out, and could have unintended consequences.
Should we shun non consensual play? Should we defederate from anything that shows BDSM? Because I can’t see any reason why your justifications wouldn’t apply to them
Don’t be disingenuous. Genuine consent practices also consider that not everyone else consents to witnessing their play, so they don’t do it where it’s not welcomed. And it’s not welcomed on Blahaj Zone, in this case. That’s all.
Exscuse me but you’re the one being disengenious, a NSFW instance had what!? Porn!? Stop the fucking presses. Are we going to defederate from all porn instances or just the ones you find icky? Where can I post my objection to having to be subjected to porn at all?
For anyone wondering, this is lemmynsfw’s take on the situation.
On a personal level, the vibes are off. Their defense seems really defensive and immediately moves to reframe the situation as body shaming. There’s a difference between an adult who looks underage posting porn of themselves and a community dedicated to porn of adults who look underage. Reducing the latter down to body shaming seems like unfair framing to me.
Did you check the community in question? I’m quite suprised to hear one could think that’s csam. To me it looks just like your typical low-effort onlyfans content. None of the models even looked “barely legal” but more like well over 20 in most cases.
The community in question listed “child-like” in their sidebar until after this defederation. Gross.
That’s a stumble, but it was because they copied and pasted the dictionary definition of “adorable” into the sidebar. The same community has more than two million members on Reddit and has been a staple for almost a decade. However, they simply wrote “It must be adorable.” instead defining adorable like Lemmy did, so there’s that.
Idk, it just seems weird to be outraged when everything is legal, consensual, and not even a fringe kink. This is like Australia banning small-titted pornstars in their late twenties in a recent project against CSAM, because these adults aren’t shaped in morally appropriate ways.
It seems weird to me that you’re on the meta for another instance complaining about a decision that doesn’t affect you.
There’s plenty of other comments here about other awful shit going on at lemmynsfw and I don’t feel like recapping that. From what I can see concerning the actual defederation, it is at worst the right choice for the wrong reasons.
The rest of the argument seems to be about the community’s intent. Including “child-like” in the sidebar of a porn community because it was copy/pasted from a dictionary definition may have been a ‘stumble’ but it was still negligent.
Yeah. I don’t think they’re sincerely trying to “be inclusive”. I think they’re just trying to misuse progressive concepts to their own advantage.
They know full well what they’re doing. The fact that it isn’t legally CP is just a technicality.
I think it’s really strange to call that a technicality. Adults with babyfaces and braces doing porn (which appears to be what this was about, as far as I can tell) is worlds apart from children being abused. Calling that a “technicality” is like saying the difference between a slasher movie and a snuff film is a “technicality.” People who watch slasher movies arent actually wanting to see snuff films deep down inside. And people who find adults with babyfaces attractive arent actually lusting after kids deep down inside.
They literally said in the post no one looks too young to be lusted after. Major red flag right there.
I feel this needs to be clarified. The point is that anyone of legal age deserves to be lusted after if that’s what they want. You telling them “you look too young, no one is allowed to find you attractive” is a bit… fucked.
To an extent, but there kind of has to be a line somewhere. I hope beyond hope that they can find fulfilling love and lust, if that’s what they want, in their personal lives. I’m all for body positivity in general. I’m just saying I wouldn’t be comfortable if Sandra Rae started posting sexually explicit content of herself. Maybe a bit of an extreme example, but they did say nobody.
I thought we already drew that line: 18 years of age, able to consent, and consenting. For context: I looked at this article where it is said Shauna Rae is 22 years old, however due to a condition her growth was stunted. I don’t think we should tell her not to date or do explicit things with her partner, when she finds one. It’s her body, and she is an adult. Similar to others with growth related conditions, such as dwarfism, or simply people who look petite even after they’ve come of age, who also get thrown under the bus regularly.
Let’s actually go that extra step and pretend she did make sexually explicit content. Now what? It immediately feels very wrong. Put that aside. I’m guessing most people are going to be worried about those with certain urges getting their rocks off…? (Honestly, not sure what to call them here, I was already unfamiliar with the term “CSAM”, so I’ll just leave it at that.) Now there’s content that’s legal and hasn’t harmed a child. That seems … better than the alternative?
I don’t think a person with unhealthy sexual urges gets to choose whether they have these urges or not. Demonizing them to the degree that we are, leads to most of them not being able to get the help they need. If it can’t be done by other means such as therapy, or therapy is not available, an outlet might help. And whether that’s “questionable” but legal porn, roleplaying, or other content or activities involving consenting adults that seems to tick the right boxes, … that’s up to them, not us. Again, miles better than the alternative, even if the immediate reaction is to be disgusted.
It’s an incredibly delicate problem. I’d say the right approach would be to do more scientific studies, but I imagine not many have or will be done because of the societal taboo. It’s also very iffy trying to search for existing research on this matter on the internet, and even if I could find some, I don’t have the expertise to know how scientifically sound it is.
In fact, in writing this and continuously re-reading my comment, I keep feeling like the points I’m making are scarily close to those of an apologist, or worse, someone who wants to normalize the sexualization of minors. I want to make it clear that I’m 100% against this. But I’m also against shaming the bodies of adults, telling them what they can’t and can’t do, because it makes me feel uncomfortable. (And I want to note that this is not meant to be an argument relating to the thread as a whole, as it would not want to tell the admins to host content I hypothesized in this post.)
Holy shit unrelated I recognize you from Vintage Story. I had a modding stint for awhile and used your guide to get started. Thanks!!
We vehemently disagreed that that was in fact the point of the community
“The fact that the community is explicitly focused on making the models appear as if they’re not 18 was fine with them.”
so this guy is lying
“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.”
JFC what a shitty take. Roleplay of CP is still fucking disgusting.
all Im seeing is you showing me them saying that they’re also not okay with it?
Read it again? They excluded roleplay as the act they find reprehensible
An adult role playing as a kid isn’t any different than them role playing as a dog, or a car, or a dragon. Are you going to tell me I can’t role play as a dragon while my partner role plays as a car?
Role playing as children having sex/being represented sexually is absolutely different from role-playing as a dragon fucking a car. If you can’t see that you might want to rethink some things.
Ageplay is absolutely a thing, but the point is they are adults. pretending to be something else, doesn’t change what they are.
It’s creepy, I would certainly not take part. But the bottom line is, in reality it’s just two adults playing pretend.
the same community (adorableporn) is also on reddit btw with 2.2m subscribers.
i have no grand moral opinion on this type of content. for me it is the same as femboy content for example, where people also push for a youthful, girly aesthetic.
as long as the content is made by consenting verified adults, i don’t care.
it’s like adults cosplaying with japanese school uniforms or calling your partner “mommy” or “daddy”.
probably not the best move in terms of sexual morals for sure, in the grand scheme of things tho this is just how people express their sexuality i guess.
it’s like adults cosplaying with japanese school uniforms or calling your partner “mommy” or “daddy”.
No, it’s not, because no one mistakes those things for actual underage children
i had no problem distinguishing the models on the community from children.
maybe it’s more difficult in some cases without looking for the onlyfans link or sth similar of the model somewhere in the post, but that’s just human anatomy.
that’s why the guy at the gas station asks for my ID card, because it is not always super clear. but apparently clear enough for reddit admins and PR people from ad companies.
i agree playing into the innocent baby aspect is probably not great for sexual morals and i wouldn’t recommend this comm to a local priest or a nun, but this type of content thrives on pretty much every mainstream platform in some shape or form.
i get it, if this instance wants to be sexually pure and removed from evil carnal desires tho. that’s kind of cool too for sure.
i had no problem distinguishing the models on the community from children.
You didn’t see the content I saw. Content that was reported as CSAM by someone on this instance, who also thought it was CSAM.
maybe it’s more difficult in some cases without looking for the onlyfans link or sth similar of the model somewhere in the post, but that’s just human anatomy.
Again, a group that is focused on models in which that is the only way you can tell that they’re not underage, is a group that is focused on appealing to people who want underage models. That is a hard no.
Spin it how you like, but I am not going to be allowing material that is easily mistaken from CSAM
Context always matters. I always check if adult material has actually been made by consenting adults. I would feel sick, if not enough information had been provided for that, but I at least have never encountered CSAM fortunately.
I had classmates in high school with balding or even graying hair and full beards. Some adults older than me, look younger than my nephews. Revenge porn and creepshots are common. (or atleast were, I’m not on platforms where these are popular)
Without context, porn will always be a morally grey area. Even commercialized hyper-capitalist porn is still an intimate affair.
That’s why I didn’t use pornhub for example, before every user had to verify themselves before posting. Before that I only read erotica or looked at suggestive drawings.
I understand your perspective tho. You get hardly paid to keep this instance running, looking at pictures that without context could be CSAM could make this volunteer work very mentally taxing. This is how NSFW works tho.
Without context, any pornographic material featuring real humans could in truth be some piece of evidence for a horrible crime.
Context always matters. I always check if adult material has actually been made by consenting adults. I would feel sick, if not enough information had been provided for that, but I at least have never encountered CSAM fortunately.
If I can’t tell, if I have to look something up because the people I’m looking at look like they’re underage, then it doesn’t matter what the answer is, because the issue is that it looks like CSAM even if it’s not. And a community designed in a way that attracts people looking for underage content is not a space I’m willing to federate with.
Isn’t it kind of shitty to tell an adult woman she can never be attractive or sexy because she looks too young? Do you truly believe that said person should never be allowed to find love, because it’s creepy? Is she supposed to just give up because you think her body is icky?
I’ve covered this many times already.
The issue isn’t individuals that happen to look younger than they are. The issue is with a community gathering sexual content of people that appear to be children.
The community that initiated this isn’t even the worst offender on lemmynsfw. There is at least one other that is explicitly focused on this.
I thought about this some more and I can feel a lot more sympathy for your decision now.
It must be horrible to get a user report about CSAM and then see a picture, which could be really CSAM on first glance.
Even if every user report was wrong from now until infinity, that initial CSAM suspicion, because of the false user report, probably makes moderating just a soul-crushing activity.
It is great if admins from other instances are willing to handle with these horror reports, just to give their users a bigger platform, but this service is not something that can be taken for granted.
I’m sorry for coming across as ignorant, I just did not consider your perspective that much really.
“Even if every user report was wrong from now until infinity, that initial CSAM suspicion, because of the false user report, probably makes moderating just a soul-crushing activity.”
Then they shouldn’t be doing it. If seeing something that looks even slightly off-putting causes this level of over-reaction, Ada doesn’t need to be moderating a community for marginalized/at-risk people. I myself am a CSA survivor, and seeing my trauma being equated to some legal adults playing pretend is fuckin’ bullshit. Seeing my trauma being equated to drawn pictures is fuckin’ bullshit. My trauma being equated to AI generated shit is fuckin’ bullshit. I’ll tell you one thing, as a CSA kid, one thing I cannot stand is someone making decisions on my behalf. To protect me. Fuck you, I’ll fuckin bite anyone that tries to take away my free agency again.
I myself am a CSA survivor
FYI, so am I
Cool, welcome to the real world where one size does not fit all. We handle our trauma differently. But I don’t subject others to my hangups. I don’t use it as a cudgel to squash dissent. Your trauma is not your fault, but it is your responsibility, not ours, to deal with.
deleted by creator
What even was the community, I dont see any focused on CSAM, or appearing as it. Was it small breasts?
According to the comments on lemmynsfw it was adorableporn
So is this guy lying? There’s nothing about making them look under 18. At least what I can see from my instance, it seems focused on being very softcore, not even a focus on small girls. In fact the latest post I see is from a milf account.
Honestly without anyone citing the actual post in question it’s literally impossible for any of us to make up our own minds on the content. All we have is one admin’s word vs another. I haven’t personally seen anything even approaching CSAM-adjacent anywhere on lemmynsfw, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. At the same time it does kinda seem like the blahaj admins wanted to defederate anyway and finally found a convenient scapegoat – it seems odd that one would completely defederate an entire instance over a single post. So I really have no idea what to think.
I feel like the people getting upset over this are taking these hypotheticals of “young looking adults just wanting to be able to make porn equally and that technically the community did nothing wrong”.
The problem is that just ignores the fact that pedophiles would definitely use communities like that as a “foot in the door” to a comminity that would naturally have a lot of closetted pedophiles. The issue isn’t young looking adults making porn, the issue is a community based around youngest possible looking adults is naturally gonna attract and encourage pedophiles.
It’s like they say, “all it takes is allowing one nazi in your bar for it to rapidly turn into a nazi bar”.
I mean yeah, but I think the solution here is just age verification. If you’re posting nsfw OC, you should have to verify age with mods, and if you’re posting nsfw from online, you should be able to prove they’re of age if prompted (like, if it’s a famous pornstar, they should be verified on pornhub or onlyfans or something so it’s easy to check whether they’re of age).
Like, I have small tits, I’d like to be able to post nsfw without people insinuating I’m pedo-baiting or that people attracted to me are intrinsically pedophilic. Just have strictly enforced age-gates and ban anyone being creepy
Anyone wanna save me from having to google what CSAM is?
Thank you. Just the spam in new was bad enough, but CSAM? Holy crap.
To be clear, it is not CSAM. It is legal porn deliberately designed to look like CSAM
Would you mind posting chat logs like the lemmynsfw team for transparency sake? Not trying to cause more drama but I think the whole thing just needs to be more transparent. Sorry if this is an out of line request.
If I believe the mod of the community in question is telling the truth, Seems like the incident in question was just a misunderstanding. The community name is
spoiler
adorableporn
I will refer to this as “the first community” in the following text.
The mod of the community copy/pasted the dictionary definition from vocabulary.com, which contains the word “childlike”.
IMO, the community in question is not trying to skirt the line of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). In fact, there is a subreddit of the same name which has absolutely nothing to do with people that appear underage.
That said, the same mod also moderates, and posts to a different community with a concerning name. The spoiler below shows the name and the first three paragraphs of the sidebar as they appear:
spoiler
Community is now open to posting. Posts not having verification info will be removed.
FauxBait is a place for sharing images and videos of the youngest-looking, legal-aged (18+) girls. If you like fresh, young starlets, this is the place for you!
Just to be clear: We only feature legal, consenting adults in accordance with U.S. Laws. All models featured were at least 18 years old at the time of filming.
Also, I’m not sure if the timestamps can be trusted, but said mod was instated as the only active mod of the first community at the same time that Ada made this post, which would mean that the mod account could not have been the one that wrote the original sidebar of the first community. Not sure what to make of that. For the sake of balance though, said mod does seem to be doing verifications of the age requirements. Also, the modlog for the first community shows two admin removals from at least 10 days before this debacle, both of which err on the side of caution, so at least the admins to seem to care about enforcing their rules.
The situation seems very muddy, but I personally don’t think the original incident was that big of a deal (assuming the mod is telling the truth). However, I certainly don’t blame the blahaj admins for defederating as it’s certainly the safest option. Wouldn’t want blahaj lemmy to get taken down :| Also happy to see less pron in my feed; I’m too lazy to block the individual /c/. Personal Instance-level blocking can’t come soon enough.
but I personally don’t think the original incident was that big of a deal
The post I saw looked like an underage teenage girl. It was reported as child porn and looked like it to me before I even looked at the community.
Then when I looked at the community, I discovered it wasn’t accidental. The whole point of the community is to appeal to folks looking for people that look like underage teenagers.
That’s a pretty big deal.
The whole point of the community is to appeal to folks looking for people that look like underage teenagers.
It’s not though? Only the other community is like that. Still, defederating is probably the best choice indeed.
