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.
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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.
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.
When I checked their communities most were basically empty?
And I didn’t see a community that fits that description.
Edit: I did try to enable nsfw content and tried from other accounts I have on other instances.
Your instance just deferedated from lemmyNSFW. You can’t see any new content there anymore with that account.
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.
HEY ADA, THIS GUY ISNT FROM BLAHAJ, WHY ISNT HE CENSORED? I THOUGHT THIS WAS FOR BLAHAJ INPUT ONLY? WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD, ADA?WHY THE HYPOCRISY? I MEAN, WE ALREADY KNOW, BUT I WANNA SEE YOU SAY IT!
“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?
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.
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.
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.
Reminds me of a lot of the debates around kink at pride/ddlg kink stuff. The latter is really not my thing and makes me uncomfortable, but I recognise that that’s a personal thing between me and my partners that I can’t, and shouldn’t, police among others.
There’s also ethical debates to be had on porn in places like Lemmy/pornhub/etc. – we can’t know that the person has consented to being posted, or that they have recourse to get it taken down and stop it being spreaded if they do not.
Then there’s the realpolitik of, regardless of ethics, whether it’s better to have porn of this type in visible, well moderated communities, or whether it’s better to try to close off ethically dubious posting.
It’s one I don’t really have squared off in my head quite yet. Similarly with kink at pride; I’ve read about the historic importance of kinksters and recognise that, but at the same time I want there to be a space where queer kids can be involved with pride without being exposed to kink. Is that just prudish social norms talking? Idk; I’m still working it through.
For what it’s worth, I feel like while society has become more socially accepting of people being different (imperfectly, but we have), at least in the US we’ve become more and more prudish when it comes to sex itself. Part of the changing era has led to a reduction in exploitation and things that were generally viewed as sketchy, but not all that big of deal (kids inheriting porn mags, sexual harassment, imbalances in power), where now sketchy behavior is quickly called out.
That said, I feel like a lot of hard conversations have been completely avoided because they’d be awkward and uncomfortable and instead we just pretend they aren’t there.
Like in theory, anyone under 18 in the US can’t legally see so much as a titty (unless it’s art), read sexually explicit material, or see a movie or tv show with explicit content. And then, literally nobody wants to talk to teenagers about sex. I watched a reddit thread eat itself alive because a dad was furious that his wife had bought their daughter a dildo after he had confiscated her laptop when catching her looking at them and asked his wife to deal with it. People were calling for her to be reported for sexual abuse, while actual women were being attacked for sharing their own experiences as teens. Things just seem a little crazy.
People are so uncomfortable with the concept that they want to disappear anything that reminds them that 18 isn’t actually a magical division between childhood and adulthood. And then you have this thread, where lemmynsfw was banned because a community sharing “cute” pornstars was a step too far despite being actual professional adults. Idk, it seems exactly like Australia’s whole thing where they started banning pornstars in their late twenties because they have small tits as part of a project to “fight” child porn.
Yeah, this seems very well thought through. For what it’s worth, I’m UK based so will be talking from that perspective. I’m in agreement that sex education is absolutely dire – I can’t see any objection to a dispassionate education in both the cultural and scientific aspects of sex. I don’t even see it as an ‘oh well, if we have to’, since sex forms such an integral part of our cultural identities (of course, including when people fall outside the societal sexual norms).
More broadly on society’s difficulty with dealing with sex (and even the criminal aspects) I’ve read some interesting books on anti-carceral feminism recently that helped give me a different perspective on how I think about sexual crimes and its perpetrators beyond the simple instinctual judgements.
For the people like me that don’t know the term: CSAM is Child Sexual Abuse Materials. It’s the term used instead of CP as “pornography” is more commonly used for pleasure or conveys the idea of consent.
As for the porn that uses people that look under age, it’s no different than the anime children that are thousands of years old. It doesn’t matter how old they are, they look like children and it’s gross.
I agree with you but not on the last point. There is a difference since they are real people, adults, and that they consent on being sexually attractive and arouse. I am not attracted to young looking bodies but that’s a notable difference to me. Also I don’t know how I feel about a community (in a broader way than a lemmy comm) focusing and fetichising on young looking adults (I do know that it disturbs me but I want to talk about society wise), but I understand that some people are attracted to young looking bodies and/or juvenile ones, and I feel like adults that consent to answer their desires is better than CASM
I’m not on this instance, but thank you for being so swift and resolute in your actions. Happy to see all due caution is being taken. Not so happy that such a community made it’s way here to the fediverse. Hopefully I won’t see any of it while doomscrolling.
I enjoy NSFW content, but I certainly don’t want to stumble into “how close to CSAM can we get while staying technically legal?” content. And the bullshit lie about this being “body shaming” pisses me off.
This admin decision obviously isn’t up for a vote, but it’s just so obviously the right call. Thank you Ada for handling this, and I’m sorry (in the Canadian way, not the guilty way 😉🇨🇦) you had to see any of that.
