Volunteering to help stop child abuse and being compelled to participate in an investigation of unknown depth, breadth, duration, and resource burden (time, money, etc.) to you are two completely different things.
If you've never been involved in litigation or other legal situation wherein you couldn't just stop the process whenever you chose to, it might be more difficult to imagine the stress and costs involved, as well as the loss of control over one's own life.
It's nice to think that it's worth it at any cost (and at the sacrifice of one's other life responsibilities). But, of course, given that one can volunteer to make such a sacrifice without waiting to be compelled by a police investigation, then anyone who has not already chosen to do so might be wise to consider whether it's really a manner in which they can afford to help.
In the US, you're likely to be left alone with all the associated costs. Help the cops all right, but if I do their work for them, I don't want to bear all the costs.
That abuse has already happened sure but it will probably continue. You want to follow any trace you can find to suppliers. Shutting down demand might also help in eliminating any economic incentives that might exist on the supply side.
Nobody is talking about donating all time, money and resources of anyone towards that goal.
In any case if you create a platform (you possibly profit from) that is used to distribute child pornography you are faced with restrictions that the rest of the public understandbly isn't.
I see no reason OP shouldn't be legally compelled to cooperate in an investigation in at least the same way a witness can be.
> Nobody is talking about donating all time, money and resources of anyone towards that goal.
That is exactly what you implied by mocking the fact that the OP even asked the question.
> I see no reason OP shouldn't be legally compelled to cooperate in an investigation in at least the same way a witness can be.
This is irrelevant to the question of whether the OP should look out for personal interests. You implied that one should not be so selfish as to even ask the questions about personal risks and costs. You mocked the very idea that he might ask such a question.
Before you make such a callous and judgmental comment, you should really think about what you would yourself sacrifice to cooperate with law enforcement. If you had, you would not have been so myopic. You would't question the seriousness of the question, even if you still thought that cooperation was necessary.
You say that as if the cost of helping is near zero. What if authorities decided that your hobby project's server was interesting to their investigation, and subsequently showed up at your home with a warrant to seize every electronic device in your home/business, including the server that hosts your business, as well as unrelated things like cell phones, video game consoles, etc?
So instead of going to the authorities directly, describing the situation and offering to work together you propose sticking your head in the sand, trying to deal with the problem on your own and hoping the authorities won't ever come across child pornography on your site?
Especially at a scale where you need automated systems to deal with the problem, law enforcement will inevitably notice sooner or later. I can't help but fell that it's not going to go over well with them (and it shouldn't), if they notice you deleted that content and possibly destroyed evidence in the process.
Technology companies and law enforcement have cooperated on this issue for a long time very successfully. They have experienced people working on nothing but this kind of thing and you're not going to deal with some local low level idiot that barely manages to deal with noise complaints. There is no reason to be paranoid and to believe they are going to act stupid.
Volunteering to help stop child abuse and being compelled to participate in an investigation of unknown depth, breadth, duration, and resource burden (time, money, etc.) to you are two completely different things.
If you've never been involved in litigation or other legal situation wherein you couldn't just stop the process whenever you chose to, it might be more difficult to imagine the stress and costs involved, as well as the loss of control over one's own life.
It's nice to think that it's worth it at any cost (and at the sacrifice of one's other life responsibilities). But, of course, given that one can volunteer to make such a sacrifice without waiting to be compelled by a police investigation, then anyone who has not already chosen to do so might be wise to consider whether it's really a manner in which they can afford to help.
(EDIT: conciseness)