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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Can I ask what the stance is for adults intentionally acting as if the were underage regardless of what they look like? Perhaps that could be a line they could agree with?
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!"
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.
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?
That was the takeaway people had even before all of this, that the instance is for the "boring" porn, and all the rest is hidden or contained. There was even a .world post saying they knew lemmy was becoming mainstream because all the furries were being "eradicated" in favor of entry level pornhub and onlyfans fluff.
I think it's good things like this happen. There is a demand for servers with literally no porn for emotional reason, and we now have one more place that is easy to point to for people who share that philosophy. The admin gave the instance more personality. Lemmy needs differentiation.
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.
I’ve seen both of these posts now, and it leads me to wonder what is the community? because this sounds like the same situation as the jailbait subreddit a long time ago, and if it’s literally a jailbait community then i’d have to agree with their decision to defederate. hosting jailbait porn is gross, equating that position to bodyshaming is insane.
Jailbait is by definition people that are under legal age, or at least pretending to be. If someone is of legal age they by definition cannot be jailbait. The appeal there is the violation of the statutory taboo, the allure of the forbidden fruit. That is not OK and we won't tolerate that.
If a grownup has a round face and is wearing braces, which is the post that I suspect launched this whole kerfluffle, that's just how they look. I'm not going to tell them that they can't be sexy, or you that you can't be into them being sexy, because of their face or their dental work. Now, you can see why someone might be concerned that someone that has braces might be underage, since many people that are underage have braces. But once we've confirmed that they aren't underage, that should be the end of it.
Was it just that one post that caused all this? Honestly I was expecting something way worse not like a single post in a fairly active looking community...
I'm not sure that's equivalent comparison. I'm not sure of the community either, but my understanding is that everyone involved is an adult.
R/jailbait was hosting sexualized content of literal children.
This is closer to blocking a community because you feel that the models under the "teen" category look too young, even though they are all technically adults.
I had this question too. It was adorableporn. It is not remotely comparable to r/jailbait so let’s not jump to conclusions. The lemmynsfw mods are absolutely in the right here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some would counter with "if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck"; which is a reasonable argument in and of itself. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suspect that if things are being said that is CSAM affirmative, then it's possible or even likely, that the individuals in question are probably participating in the viewing, distribution, or even production, of such material.
One of the good things about the internet is that it becomes harder to have a group or community so isolated that it's not able to be inspected at a moments notice by anyone with an internet connection; Especially if the content is of a questionable or illegal nature, and the perpetrators of that content's production and distribution are not very intelligent (and bluntly, most don't seem to be). It becomes harder to "hide in plain sight" as it used to be, especially when trying to further your questionable or illegal goals. At some point those individuals need to poke their head into the public spaces to try to recruit more people who are sympathetic to their goals, and by doing so, they can readily be found, investigated and hopefully charged and imprisoned for their activities.
If there is any CSAM on any lemmy instance, or people perpetrating CSAM via lemmy, I hope the individuals who are engaged in any related activity are caught, charged and imprisoned for their actions.
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.
they 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.
The thing I don’t get is they seem to host plenty of nsfw material themselves that would fall under that category of “child-like”. I’m not going to argue the specifics on where the line should be drawn, but I feel like they should at least moderate their own communities properly before such action against content that’s no worse than theirs
I mean, the real issue is that it's entirely subjective. Once they confirmed that the material in question was in fact legal, that should have been the end of it. I already think that regulating hentai is dumb, but taking issue with real women's bodies like Australia did?
I mean seriously, what's the point of drawing the line at 18, if you're gonna ignore the line because women don't magically shapeshift on their 18th birthday? The whole premise of legality is on age, not appearance.
I actually already have accounts on both. It's just one of those weird things of federation that I can't see one side from my account on the other anymore.
I think this is a perfect example of what federation is all about. If the Admins of one community are unhappy with the decisions of another they are free to voice that, and if they and their users want to defederate, they can. Personally, I just block all communties that aren't man and cock centered, and have no interest in anyone under 21, so try and block those too.
Couldn't agree more. I think thinking about the fediverse as separate websites - separate entities - that happen to share (a lot of) data makes it make sense. They're running their website, they can choose to show or not show whatever they like.
Yeah their reasoning for defederating is kinda dumb, but luckily anyone can just make a separate account for lemmynsfw so nothing really is lost. I kinda don't even see why someone would leave nsfw enabled on their main account, like do you wanna have sexy photos mixed in with your news, cat pictures, Hobby-communities?
Maybe I'm a weirdo but I actually prefer nsfw stuff on my main account too. Most of my feed on the old site was distressing news (climate change, war, politics etc) and made me feel awful in the way social media is uniquely adept at.
On Lemmy I still see that stuff but it's interspersed with boobs, which I find really lifts my mood
Honestly, one of my biggest gripes was when Reddit removed nsfw content from r/all instead of using the "don't show nsfw content" switch, or defaulting to r/popular which was supposed to be the sfw replacement.
Like you said, having the occasional happy little titty in between dire commentary on the state of the world and climate just helped make things a little brighter.
You can still see them from here. Defederation is one-way. It just means, if you comment/vote on any post from there, the comment won't spread to other instances.
They said that you were okay with the fact that users were specifically trying to make it seem like they were underage. Good to hear the other side of the story.
Their misrepresentation of your position is arguably slander in the legal sense in that it attributes a criminal intent to you. I would not be cool with their statement remaining as is. They can say that y’all disagreed about whether it was child fetishization in the first place, which is accurate.
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.
I don't have a problem with lemmnsfw.com and find a lot of the material to be tasteful pornography. I rather agree with no body and image shaming. While my instance doesn't host any communities yet, I see no reason federate with them as similar communities can be found on other instances with much less heavy-handed tactics. I'll wash my hands of https://lemmy.blahaj.zone in solidarity.
I appreciate the relative civility coming from both sides here. There's room enough in the fediverse for as many Lemmy instances as we require. Nobody should be forced to do something that they don't want to do whether that be to host content or to moderate content. I encourage users to respect the decisions of both instances.
Naked petite adults that look like 17/18/19 year klds by the looks of it.
I assume the controversy is that these people appear as if they are not quite 18 yet. Which, remember, is not child porn, even if they where 17 depending on your western country.
That's besides the point though, as they appear to all be consenting adults, making such a point moot anyways.
Personally, my preference is women with smaller breasts. But while that's my preference, I have never though, yay, they look like jail bait breasts. That's some sick shit. I just prefer smaller breasts because I get bored of bigger ones. I feel like there's a pressure to always do something with them when they're such a small part of the overall package. Anyone that can't see FauxBait is marketing itself as pedo-fodder has a problem.
After reading both admin statements I'm not sure which side I fall on. Both raise legitimate concerns.
On one hand, it's incredibly shitty to shame someone for how they look, regardless of what they're doing.
On the other hand, fetishizing childlike appearances is also pretty skeevy, even if everyone is an adult.
However, my understanding is that this is how the fediverse is designed to operate.
Everyone has the ability to host whatever content they want and also choose which instances they want to see content from.
Blahaj.zone isn't going anywhere and if you still want to see the stuff there, there are numerous instances that can let you do that. Accounts are free.
Looking through the alleged community ([email protected]) I’m really not seeing anything that looks inherently like it could be misinterpreted as CSAM.
A lot of people are taking it at face value that fetishizing childlike appearances even happened here, which it has not. This instance’s rules ban even fictive depictions of the underage. Drawings, anything.
No one disagrees that fetishizing children is bad. No one. What you have here is the blahaj mods flipping out and thinking that this occurred when it did not. They even falsely claimed that the admins here are okay with that happening, which they are not.
Let’s not dignify their position by accepting their false premise and then saying “you know they kinda have a point.”
drumming up lynch mobs against people who didn't do anything wrong because "it's not CSAM but you want it to be". This is just a moral crusade against consenting adults, it's 100% bullshit, and the person who made the call in blahaj is now going through the announcement thread for the call and deleting dissenting opinions.
I am almost 100% aligned with you but I think there is a point to make that there are differences between the right for any adult to create sensual and sexual desire no matter their body type AND gathering and fetichising on young looking bodies or adult bodies that could be perceived as juvenile
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
It is not censorship to say that I will not let you use my resources that I bought, pay monthly fees for, and spend a chunk of my life to maintain, so you can to spread your message. That's fucking unhinged. Come back to reality.
Is it censorship when I choose not to click on a link? What if I have a live stream and people are watching me, is it censorship then? No??? Same fucking thing. My hardware. My server. I get the last say on what runs on it. That's not censorship, that's not even close.
on the plus side lemmynsfw is safe from admins that are hostile to nsfw in general. most social media platforms had a nsfw purge of some kind in the past.
making a second account for nsfw is what i do for the other platforms anyways. with most lemmy apps and some web frontends, using multiple accounts is pretty easy as well.
if by "censored" you mean "still perfectly accessible to anyone who wants to read or participate but no longer being actively promoted by strangers". So, you know, not at all censored.
I don't get the obsession with wanting as many communities as possible federated with LemmyNSFW. Nobody's going to use their account from another instance to post here...
I haven't looked for that comm and won't, but it sounds intended to attract viewers with pedo tendencies. Whether that's a safe outlet or a red flag, idk. I do know that Reddit and other sites go apeshit banning even erotic fiction with underage characters. I have heard they do that not from concern that the fiction could be illegal per se, but rather that they don't want to create a pedo magnet that could then bring the pedos into contact with actual underage users.
OTOH, I know that AO3 chose not to have such a rule. IDK if that has led to any bad stuff in real life. I hope not, of course.