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by scarmig 42 days ago
Having tens of thousands of decentralized, independently moderated servers would result in an order of magnitude more CSAM being shared than having a few oligopolies. The abusers just have to find the weakest link, and that weakest link will have fewer resources than multi trillion dollar companies. You would also likely not hear many news stories about it, because they won't have the expertise to even detect it.

That's a tradeoff you can choose to make, but you need to enter into it with open eyes.

3 comments

> Having tens of thousands of decentralized, independently moderated servers would result in an order of magnitude more CSAM being shared than having a few oligopolies.

It doesn't matter how many are shared but how many are viewed. On a small server community policing works just fine, bad actors are easier and faster to block and to top it off, the smaller reach of each server makes it unprofitable to target multiple serves, fish for their weak points. etc - the dirty jobs become unprofitable which is what matters most.

With the help of AI, small players can do a better job at removing CSAM.

> With the help of AI, small players can do a better job at removing CSAM.

Chicken/egg. How do you expect that AI to be able to detect CSAM without appropriate training, which requires appropriately classified training data?

>That's a tradeoff you can choose to make, but you need to enter into it with open eyes.

No it's not. It's certainly not my choice. No one asked me if it's okay for Facebook to distribute CSAM because you insist it would be worse if it didn't.

I don't really care if you classify it as a choice or not. One set of actions results in more CSAM than others. Just because you don't like the implication of there being tradeoffs doesn't mean there aren't tradeoffs.
You classified it as a choice, not me.
> or not
So you don't care that you're wrong? Not a surprise coming from someone handwaving away the mess Meta made.
In what regard is it incorrect that a single, larger entity that is at least notionally committed to avoiding the existence of any specific type of content on their platform is more likely to successfully avoid the existence of that type of content on their platform than smaller entities with less resources?

Now consider that some of those smaller entities might not be even notionally interested in avoiding the existence of that specific type of content on their platform, and are small enough for regulators to be unaware of its existence?

What your opponent is saying is, "there are mutually exclusive A and B". A being widespread CSAM and B being somebody need to look at CSAM to remove it.

Can you elaborate on what exactly is wrong there? Do you see the third alternative C and it's not the "whole choice"? Or are you saying A or B do not exist and therefore there's no choice? Please name C, or tell us why A or B don't exist (or aren't acceptable), or explain your view that doesn't fit into these options.

This isn't an either or. X isn't the only place CSAM is, there are gazillions of other sources. It I'd probably the easiest place to find it tho.