this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
511 points (97.9% liked)

Today I Learned

17770 readers
353 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 80 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

So, some context as to why this happens: the US does not give a fuck about how old someone is if they're involved in the production of csam, nor does it care if it was voluntary. This means that, in the eye of the law, a teenager sending nudes to their boyfriend is just as much of a pedophile as the man shooting child porn; and their boyfriend is just as much of a pedophile for viewing and possessing them. I'm guessing that OP likely posted this after reading an article like this: https://apnews.com/article/child-images-police-columbus-cf377933b5be55297cf88c923b8f0b92

It doesn't stop there though. I have been told to never, ever try to submit evidence to the FBI of someone being a child predator. The reason for that is because the FBI does not give a fuck. They will prosecute you as a predator, even if you're just trying to do the right thing. Combine that with the fact that an accusation of being a predator is life-ending, even if you're found innocent, and it encourages people to destroy evidence and stay quiet.

Finally, if there's any csam on your PC, whether or not you're aware of it, regardless of whether you received it voluntarily (like temp browser files from accidently viewing a hijacked website with cp on the page), you are automatically a pedophile in the eyes of US law. This is especially destructive when it comes to a video, where each frame is counted as an individual piece of csam. This means you can potentially be taken to court for hundreds or thousands of pieces of child pornography because someone embedded a clip of cp in a movie.

Fuck pedophiles, but the law needs an overhaul. In addition to the number of people who got put on the registry as kids, there are probably a lot of people who've gotten fucked because they were legitimately trying to do the right thing.

Edit: I could be wrong about this, the law may have changed or I may have been misinformed. It's been a long time since I was told this, but it's in line with the article I linked and the one OP linked, so it's unfortunately far too believable to disregard. If there are any legal experts who can counter this, please speak up.

Edit 2: someone has replied telling me that I'm at least partially wrong, which I'm happy to hear. Still, stay safe. It seems like using csam to fuck with people, especially those in marginalized communities, is becoming more popular. Report it, clear your cache and/or temp files directory (whichever is associated with the program you had the misfortune of viewing it through), and move on. Or, to put it another way, treat it as if you accidently picked up an unshielded bar of plutonium by the side of the road. Put it down, leave the area, report it to authorities, thoroughly clean yourself off (then maybe go to the hospital).

[–] [email protected] 119 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Um, yeah, most of this is made up.

If you encounter CSAM on the web, just report it to https://report.cybertip.org/ and clear your cache. You don't have to fill out all the detail fields; just give 'em the URL that linked to it.

But mostly, don't go looking. Don't try to be a brave vigilante willing to subject yourself to awfulness in order to protect children. That's not how it works. If you go looking, folks will assume you're participating.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I was mainly talking about submitting evidence, like a discord screenshot of someone posting cp. I might still be wrong there though.

Edit: like, the issues Lemmy has had with people spamming csam is an example of how someone might come across it unintentionally. Someone might feel compelled to actually submit a screenshot or the video itself as evidence to the FBI, which I've been told is a very bad idea.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago

NCMEC is the legally designated place to report it. Don't go to any more trouble than you need to. There are folks whose job it actually is to track this stuff down, take it down, and prosecute the people creating it. Let them do their job.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Mens rea is a legal requirement, isn't it? Like don't they have to prove intent?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

There are things called strict liability offences, for which intent is not required to prove guilt.

Possession of CSAM is one of those, although I'm not sure about the US (most other countries it is).