Several months ago Beehaw received a report about CSAM (i.e. Child Sexual Abuse Material). As an admin, I had to investigate this in order to verify and take the next steps. This was the first time in my life that I had ever seen images such as these. Not to go into great detail, but the images were of a very young child performing sexual acts with an adult.
The explicit nature of these images, the gut-wrenching shock and horror, the disgust and helplessness were very overwhelming to me. Those images are burnt into my mind and I would love to get rid of them but I don’t know how or if it is possible. Maybe time will take them out of my mind.
In my strong opinion, Beehaw must seek a platform where NO ONE will ever have to see these types of images. A software platform that makes it nearly impossible for Beehaw to host, in any way, CSAM.
If the other admins want to give their opinions about this, then I am all ears.
I, simply, cannot move forward with the Beehaw project unless this is one of our top priorities when choosing where we are going to go.
As others have suggested, I think temporarily suspending images until you guys can settle on a safe alternative to lemmy is a good idea.
Im sorry you had to see something like this, i hope you are able to seek out some counceling asap, talk to someone about it. Even something like https://www.7cups.com/ might be helpful.
There is no such thing as a safer alternative to Lemmy. It’s very easy to say things like “use tools” to filter these things, but in actuality it’s anything but, it’s way beyond a foss project. (or Reddit for that matter, though they are trying and good gawd, I just remembered something I saw on reddit and have not thought of for years, damn it)
Well true, but I meant more like a forum with limited access (no images or links) until you meet certain requirements etc. So not totally safe, but a bit safer than the current setup