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.
I don’t know how you get the impression that this increases censorship.
Instance admin already manually block content. And they are already able to do that to any extend they wish to do.
This tool would simply automate that process.
Admins would not gain or lose any ability to block content. Identifying child porn would simply be easier.
(Imagine an admin going to their database and doing a CTRL+F with the term “child porn”, and then going through the posts to find offending ones. But instead of CTRL+F it’s an AI.)
(For some reason I don’t get a notification when you answer my comment. Is that a known issue? Did you block me or something?)
Well… precisely?
Censorship is any removal of material considered “undesirable”, whether you agree with why it is considered “undesirable” or not.
If you want more censorship of “material that you personally consider undesirable”, then just say so, don’t hide behind some disingenuous “but it isn’t censorship”. Then we can discuss the merits of that classification, and of the means proposed to achieve such censorship.
You seem to be missing my point.
This tool would not increase censorship.
Admins are already able to implement all censorship they want.
Admins are already able to block left-wing opinions, right-wing opinions, child porn, normal porn.
And that already happens.
Lots of instances (like feddit.de) block pornographic content.
Lots of instances (like lemmy.blahaj.zone) block right-wing content.
It is already possible, and it is already happening.
An AI which can detect CSAM (and potentially other content) won’t change that. It will simply make the admins’ job easier.