Lemmy’s Image Problem - We Distribute
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The popular Reddit alternative’s user count has grown a lot over the past year. One problem, though: users and admins can’t delete images.

Highlighting the recent report of users and admins being unable to delete images, and how Trust & Safety tooling is currently lacking.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Well, yeah…

    If you upload a picture to Lemmy, it’s going to get saved by a shit of federated instances.

    That’s how federation works, but once it happens, it’s hard to get all of them to delete it.

    The fix is easy:

    Upload somewhere else (theres a bunch of images hosts) then make your post point to that image host. Federated instances just have to host the link, so it’s good for them too.

    I’d love to see something like the RES feature where Lemmy can still show an expandable thumbnail for non-hosted images. RES pulled it off fine years ago, not sure how hard it would be.

    But that would fix all these issues

    • bloup@lemmy.sdf.org
      0·
      2 years ago

      I have to say, I think the article actually does address what you’re saying, in particular here:

      There are a couple of reasons as to why this is so surprising. Firstly, the Trust & Safety aspect: a few months ago, several Lemmy servers were absolutely hammered with CSAM, to the point that communities shut down and several servers were forced to defederate from one another or shut down themselves.

      Simply put, the existing moderation tooling is not adequate for removing illegal content from servers. It’s bad enough to have to jump through hoops dealing with local content, but when it comes to federated data, it’s a whole other ball game.

      The second, equally important aspect is one of user consent. If a user accidentally uploads a sensitive image, or wants to wipe their account off of a server, the instance should make an effort to comply with their wishes. Federated deletions fail sometimes, but an earnest attempt to remove content from a local server should be trivial, and attempting to perform a remote delete is better than nothing.

      I also just want to point out that the knife cuts both ways. Yes, it’s impossible to guarantee nodes you’re federating with aren’t just ignoring remote delete requests. But, there is a benefit to acting in good faith that I think is easy to infer from the CSAM material example the article presents.