One of the admins at lemmy.blahaj.zone asked us to purge a community and all of its users because they thought it was full of child sexual abuse material, aka CSAM, fka kiddy porn. We assured them that we had checked this comm thoroughly and we were satisfied that all of the models on it were of age.
The admin then demanded we purge the comm because they mistook it for CSAM, and claimed that the entire point of the community was to make people think it was CSAM. We vehemently disagreed that that was in fact the point of the community, but they decided to defederate from us anyway. That is of course their choice, but we will not purge our communities or users because someone else makes a mistake of fact, and then lays the responsibility for their mistake at our feet.
If someone made a community intended to fool people into thinking it was kiddy porn, that would be a real problem. If someone of age goes online and pretends – not roleplays, but pretends with intent to deceive – to be a child and makes porn, that is a real problem. Nobody here is doing that.
One of the reasons we run our instance the way that we do is that we want it to be inclusive. We don’t body shame, and we believe that all adults have a right to sexual expression. That means no adult on our instance is too thin, fat, bald, masculine, old, young, cis, gay, etc., to be sexy, and that includes adults that look younger than some people think they should. Everyone has a right to lust and to be lusted after. There’s no way to draw a line that says “you can’t like adult people that look like X” without crossing a line that we will not cross.
EDIT: OK, closing this post to new comments. Everything that needs saying has been said. Link to my convo with the blahaj admin here.
I’m not subscribed to that community. It’s not my thing. I’m not into Loli either. Frankly, I do see a problem with Loli. I guess to me it is because the Loli “excuse” of “she’s actually 3000 years old but just looks like a child” but then they proceed to portray them exactly as someone would portray a child. They (generally, I’m sure someone has counter examples) don’t portray them as some wizened elderly woman in a child’s body. That’s why Loli generally feels disgusting to me.
Age verification is the correct thing to do. In the broader internet where things are less strict I’m sure you can find actual underage actors (who are possibly even being trafficked) where it could be avoided with proper age verification. Frankly I think that’s just a super important thing (even apart from this specific discussion). An assumption I’m making (and I guess everyone is) is that the admins’ age verification is adequate. So, assuming it is, I don’t see a problem with allowing creators who appear young to make NSFW content of themselves. If it’s not adequate then there’s a much more important discussion that needs to be had. Based on some of the sticky posts over the past few weeks it seems like they’re serious about it.
To your point, a lot of content makes my skin crawl. I just ignore it. If there’s any I think is actually illegal I’d report it. Maybe I haven’t seen the specific ones you’re talking about so maybe that’s why I don’t feel the same way. I briefly went to the community when I heard about this and just now to see what the fuss was and it just seemed like legal but youthful looking people. Or just folks in their mid twenties just trying to look cute or wholesome. I didn’t see anything that makes me feel the need to report anything as CSAM. That’s just me. I believe you should report content you think is CSAM, I’m not trying to say you shouldn’t.
I know I said it before but I really do view this whole thing similar to folks who may not understand forms of kink are consensual. It’s not a one-to-one thing, but it is similar. Seeing a consensual rape-play session may make people question what the fuck is happening and may make their skin crawl. But if everyone is consenting then it’s fine. I understand why people would have a hard time accepting that (especially if they themselves have been abused).