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Stanford researchers find Mastodon has a massive child abuse material problem (www.theverge.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Mastodon, an alternative social network to Twitter, has a serious problem with child sexual abuse material according to researchers from Stanford University. In just two days, researchers found over 100 instances of known CSAM across over 325,000 posts on Mastodon. The researchers found hundreds of posts containing CSAM related hashtags and links pointing to CSAM trading and grooming of minors. One Mastodon server was even taken down for a period of time due to CSAM being posted. The researchers suggest that decentralized networks like Mastodon need to implement more robust moderation tools and reporting mechanisms to address the prevalence of CSAM.

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[–] 31 points 3 years ago* (8 children)

It doesn't help to bring whataboutism into this discussion. This is a known problem with the open nature of federation. So is bigotry and hate speech. To address these problems, it's important to first acknowledge that they exist.

Also, since fed is still in the early stages, now is the time to experiment with mechanisms to control them. Saying that the problem is innate to networks is only sweeping it under the rug. At some point there will be a watershed event that'll force these conversations anyway.

The challenge is in moderating such content without being ham-fisted. I must admit I have absolutely no idea how, this is just my read of the situation.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 years ago

    @mudeth @pglpm you really don't beyond our current tools and reporting to authorities.

    This is not a single monolithic platform, it's like attributing the bad behavior of some websites to HTTP.

    Our existing moderation tools are already remarkably robust and defederating is absolutely how this is approached. If a server shares content that's illegal in your country (or otherwise just objectionable) and they have no interest in self-moderating, you stop federating with them.

    Moderation is not about stamping out the existence of these things, it's about protecting your users from them.

    If they're not willing to take action against this material on their servers, then the only thing further that can be done is reporting it to the authorities or the court of public opinion.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (6 children)

    Maybe my comment wasn't clear or you misread it. It wasn't meant to be sarcastic. Obviously there's a problem and we want (not just need) to do something about it. But it's also important to be careful about how the problem is presented - and manipulated - and about how fingers are pointed. One can't point a finger at "Mastodon" the same way one could point it at "Twitter". Doing so has some similarities to pointing a finger at the http protocol.

    Edit: see for instance the comment by @while1malloc0@beehaw.org to this post.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Understood, thanks. Yes I did misread it as sarcasm. Thanks for clearing that up :)

    However I disagree with @shiri@foggyminds.com in that Lemmy, and the Fediverse, are interfaced with as monolithic entities. Not just by people from the outside, but even by its own users. There are people here saying how they love the community on Lemmy for example. It's just the way people group things, and no amount of technical explanation will prevent this semantic grouping.

    For example, the person who was arrested for CSAM recently was running a Tor exit node, but that didn't help his case. As shiri pointed out, defederation works for black-and-white cases. But what about in cases like disagreement, where things are a bit more gray? Like hard political viewpoints? We've already seen the open internet devolve into bubbles with no productive discourse. Federation has a unique opportunity to solve that problem starting from scratch, and learning from previous mistakes. Defed is not the solution, it isn't granular enough for one.

    Another problem defederation is that it is after-the-fact and depends on moderators and admins. There will inevitably be a backlog (pointed out in the article). With enough community reports, could there be a holding-cell style mechanism in federated networks? I think there is space to explore this deeper, and the study does the useful job of pointing out liabilities in the current state-of-the-art.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago

    Another way to look at it is: How would you solve this problem with email?

    The reality is, there is no way to solve the problem of moderation across disparate servers without some unified point of contact. With any form of federation, your options are:

    1. close-source the protocol, api, and implementation and have the creator be the final arbiter, either by proxy of code, or by having a back door
    2. Have every instance agree to a singular set of rules/admins
    3. Don't and just let the instances decide where to draw lines.

    The reality is, any federated system is gonna have these issues, and as long as the protocol is open, anyone can implement any instance on top of it they want. It would be wonderful to solve this issue "properly", but it's like dealing with encryption. You can't force bad people to play by the rules, and any attempt to do so breaks the fundamental purpose of these systems.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago*

    I share and promote this attitude. If I must be honest it feels a little hopeless: it seems that since the 1970s or 1980s humanity has been going down the drain. I fear "fediverse wars". It's 2023 and we basically have a World War III going on, illiteracy and misinformation steadily increase, corporations play the role of governments, science and scientific truth have become anti-Galilean based on "authorities" and majority votes, and natural stupidity is used to train artificial intelligence. I just feel sad.

    But I don't mean to be defeatist. No matter the chances we can fight for what's right.

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  • [+] 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago* (1 child)

    Defederation is a double-edged sword

    Agreed. It's not the solution.

    The reality is that it’s a whole bunch of entirely separate environments and we’ve walked this path well with email

    On this I disagree. There are many fundamental differences. Email is private, while federated social media is public. Email is one-to-one primarily, or one-to-few. Soc media is broadcast style. The law would see it differently, and the abuse potential is also different. @faeranne@lemmy.blahaj.zone also used e-mail as a parallel and I don't think that model works well.

    The process here on Mastodon is to decide for yourself what is worth taking action on.

    I agree for myself, but that wouldn't shield a lay user. I can recommend that a parent sign up for reddit, because I know what they'll see on the frontpage. Asking them to moderate for themselves can be tricky. As an example, if people could moderate content themselves we wouldn't have climate skeptics and holocaust deniers. There is an element of housekeeping to be done top-down for a platform to function as a public service, which is what I assume Lemmy wants to be.

    Otherwise there's always the danger of it becoming an wild-west platform that'll attract extremists more than casual users looking for information.

    Automated action is bad because there’s no automated identity verification here and it’s an open door to denial of service attacks

    Good point.

    The fediverse actually helps in moderation because each admin is responsible for a group of users and the rest of the fediverse basically decides whether they’re doing their job acceptably via federation and defederation

    The way I see it this will inevitably lead to concentration of users, defeating the purpose of federation. One or two servers will be seen as 'safe' and people will recommend that to their friends and family. What stops those two instances from becoming the reddit of 20 years from now? We've seen what concentration of power in a few internet companies has done to the Internet itself, why retread the same steps?

    Again I may be very naive, but I think with the big idea that is federation, what is sorely lacking is a robust federated moderation protocol.

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