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Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

news.ycombinator.com

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Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#1

Post by Todamont »

I ran a popular D* pod for about 7 years, called Cryptospora.net. We had approximately 30,000 users signed up. It was with much regret that I I shut my pod down, permanently, last month. Here's why.

There were certain neo-Nazis who would get banned from pod after pod, but they just kept signing up at new or foreign-language pods, and it was impossible to prevent neo-Nazi content from being shared to my pod and being displayed in my feed. There is CURRENTLY a large amount of child pornography being shared on the D* network. It became impossible for me to stop child-porn content or neo-Nazi hatespeech content from being shared to my pod and displayed to my users.

I made a thread in the Discourse channel for Diaspora podmins, and a github issue ticket. I suggested that the programmer community within D* come together to implement some form of OPTIONAL federated moderation system, so that I could import ban lists from other pods (ones with an actual staff) and make my ban lists available for other pods to import, based on some standardized TOS formats.

The D* core devs BANNED me from their CENTRALIZED forums for podmins, including their Discourse channel, their Github issues system, and their reddit sub. Apparently discussions about moderation are a bannable offense for these guys, and they are ADAMANT that there will NEVER be any effective network-wide system for preventing child-pornography abuse being posted to their network.

I would suggest that if YCombinator still owns shares in the Diaspora Foundation, they should consider rescinding ownership of those shares, and potentially suing the Diaspora Foundation for their money back. YCombinator should not be an unwilling share-owner of a child-porn sharing network.

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#4

Post by Todamont »

Todamont wrote: post #3

Here you go! https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7865 https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7866

https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7464

And this one :) This is the thread they said was relevant to the discussion and that I should comment on, and then they banned me for "spamming" their issues ticket system when I commented on it.

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#5

Post by Todamont »

I couldn't find the discourse discussions I started, apparently they deleted them when they banned me from discourse, for 1000 years.

Here's an interesting discussion where they talk about how users shouldn't be banned from discourse / loomio, which I found interesting, though:

https://discourse.diasporafoundation.org/t/banning-users-fro...

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#6

Post by sierdolij »

This is the problem of decentralized, too open systems (aka anarchy): it enables terrorism, child porn, violent hate groups, organized crime and other extremists and criminals. There needs to be a reputation system and stronger limits to gradually give a user more access. Also, if they're required to pay for what they use (micropayment) to keep resources on servers, they're less likely to post illegal junk. Otherwise, crazy jerks will turn a free service into a Tragedy of the Commons, and everyone loses. We need more user-supported, non-profit sensible social media, productivity and other web apps to replace the for-profit and the wild-west ones that don't scale so well without major work. That being said, free often becomes junk because there's not the focus and professionalism to make something cool.

TL;DR - free doesn't scale without meaningful accountability

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#7

Post by miguelrochefort »

sierdolij wrote: post #6

This is the problem of decentralized, too open systems (aka anarchy): it enables terrorism, child porn, violent hate groups, organized crime and other extremists and criminals. There needs to be a reputation system and stronger limits to gradually give a user more access. Also, if they're required to pay for what they use (micropayment) to keep resources on servers, they're less likely to post illegal junk. Otherwise…

Filtering must be inbound, not outbound.

Users should be able to broadcast whatever they want, including highly illegal stuff.

Users should be able to filter whatever they receive, based on their individual preferences.

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#8

Post by Todamont »

sierdolij wrote: post #6

This is the problem of decentralized, too open systems (aka anarchy): it enables terrorism, child porn, violent hate groups, organized crime and other extremists and criminals. There needs to be a reputation system and stronger limits to gradually give a user more access. Also, if they're required to pay for what they use (micropayment) to keep resources on servers, they're less likely to post illegal junk. Otherwise…

I see it as a problem of moderation, which is notoriously tricky to do fairly, for any individual, and when you get a roomfull of techno-libertarians together it becomes insurmountable to reach consensus on the process. My takeaway is that federated networks need a federated moderation system, and they will become segmented when the "good" actors essentially ban / disconnect from the "bad" actors or just the uninitiated. So moderation systems maybe need to be centralized to some degree to be effective. I've reached out to the CEO of YCombinator, and the Youth Pastor of YCombinator about this, I'm looking forward to hearing their responses. I've also reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the group that oversees the Free Software Support Network of which the Diaspora Foundation is a part of, and I'll be urging them to take action against Diaspora Foundation also. I have just completed a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, letting them know about Diaspora's little CP problem. My buddy from the Wall Street Journal seems interested now too :)

Re: Diaspora Foundation: A Child-Porn Sharing Network

#9

Post by mcv »

Todamont wrote: post #4
Todamont wrote: post #3

Here you go! https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7865 https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7866

https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/7464 And this one :) This is the thread they said was relevant to the discussion and that I should comment on, and then they banned me for "spamming" their issues ticket system when I commented on it.

I don't think it's discussing moderation that got you banned, but spamming github issues about it. A single issue should suffice. I can't verify it, but they refer to you spamming their discourse too.

That said, I'd expect a discussion on this topic to be welcomed. The only reason they could reasonably be annoyed by you is if you keep rehashing points they've already discussed.

In that case, the right approach would be to read and understand how their current moderation tools work, the reasons why they work that way, and their reasons for not doing the thing you propose. If they don't address your concerns, state your case clearly and unambiguously (in one github issue you seemed to be arguing for centralised moderation, which is obviously not going to happen; emphasise that it's a voluntary choice for podmins who don't want to manually block repeat offenders) and explain why their current system doesn't address this.

That said, Diaspora development seems to be incredibly slow, so maybe they're not very eager to add completely new features that not many people are interested in. Understand that if you're not going to write this code, it's probably not going to happen.

But if childporn is really clearly a problem, and Diaspora is clearly unwilling to address the issue by considering tools to help podmins, then posting on a blog of your own could be a good way to initiate that discussion in a way that they can't block.

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