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

I’m very sorry this happened to you, and I wish I could offer you some advice… but that’s the main reason I stopped hosting open community stuff many years ago. I thought I was hardened enough, but nope; between the spam, the “shock imagery” (NSFL gore, CSAM), the doxxing, and toxic users in general… even having some ads was far from making it all worthwhile. There is a reason why “the big ones” like Facebook or Google churn through 3rd world mods who can’t take it for more than a few months before getting burnt out.

I wish I could tell you that you’ll eventually forget what you’ve seen… but I still remember stuff from 30 years ago. Also don’t want to scare you, but it’s not limited to images… some “fanfiction” with text imagery is evil shit that I still can’t forget either.

Nowadays, you can find automated CSAM identification services, like the one run by Microsoft, so if you integrated that, you could err on the side of caution and block any image it marks as even suspicious. This may or may not work in your jurisdiction, with some requiring you to “preserve the proof” and submit it to authorities (plus different jurisdictions having different definitions of what is an what isn’t breaking the law, and laws against swamping them with false positives… so you basically can’t win). This will also do nothing for the NSFL or text based imagery.

A way to “shield yourself” from all of this as an admin, is to go to an encrypted platform where you can’t even see what’s getting posted, so you never run the risk of seeing that kind of content… but then you end up with zero moderation tools, pushing all the burden onto your users, so not suitable for a safe space.

Honestly, I don’t think there is an effective solution for this yet. It’s been a great time abusing the good will of the admins and mods staying on Beehaw, but if you can’t find a reasonable compromise… oh well.

I am very sorry you had to go through such a terrible experience.

It is my sincerest hope that you will be able to find a workable solution to this problem, from Lemmy or elsewhere.

I am (and have been) okay with admins taking any action necessary to accomplish the goals of the Beehaw project. So removing image hosting, implementing lemmy-safety, restricting federation severely, do whatever you need.

And please, also do whatever you need to care for yourself, including if it means needing to take a break from the site.

I’m sorry this happened to you. I think you should disable images on beehaw. Not worth compromising your mental health and it’s too big a job to moderate that level of stuff - which you will have to do if images can be hosted.

I’m really sorry again that someone traumatized you and others with csam. Some people are beyond effed up - I’m really angry hearing about this.

Im sorry you had to witness that. I grew up on forums and message boards in the mid 2000s and onward and Ive still not forgotten a lot of the shock images and other vile things people would post on forums.

You essentially sacrificed a part of your innocence to aid the community and i find that incredibly selfless and respected, although again I am truly sorry it ever had to come to that.

I know it’s not really my place as a stranger to give unsolicited advice but if you find yourself struggling, there is a form of therapy called EMDR that is supposedly very successful with getting the brain to fully digest traumatic events.

People keep talking about going to another platform. Personally I think a better idea would be to develop lemmy to deal with these issues. This must be a fediverse wide problem. So some discussion with other admins and the developers is probably the way to go on many of these things. Moreover you work with https://opencollective.com/, can they help. Beyond this, especially CSAM, there must be large funding agencies where one could get a grant to get some real professional programming put into this problem. Perhaps we could raise funds ourselves to help with this too.

So frankly I would like to see Beehaw solve the issues with lemmy, rather then just move to some other platform that will have its own issues. The exception may be if the Beehaw people think that being a safe space creates too big a target that you have to leave the Threadiverse to be safe. That to me seems like letting the haters win. It is exactly what they want. My vote will always be to solve the threadiverse issues rather then run away.

Just my feeling. There may be more short term practical issues that take precedence and frankly it is all up to you guys where you want to take this project.

Aren’t there ways to automatically scan the content of posts to detect csam and other disturbed content?

Because completely disallowing images isn’t the solution. For once, people can still share those things through links. And secondly, there are people who need images and the like to communicate.