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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.
Sorry, I should have been more specific in my comment. Lemmynsfw has tons of communities dedicated to women with small boobs and small/petite women. This is great, they have gorgeous bodies and they should be appreciated too! However, Lemmynsfw has a community called “fauxbait” which is… obviously not ok. I was on Reddit well before 2010, but anyone on there from that era remembers the controversy that the “jailbait” subreddit caused. In fact, to say it was a controversy is understating it… anyways, fauxbait on lemmtnsfw specifically in its sidebar says “a community dedicated to women who look underage but aren’t.” Which to me is a MASSIVE red flag. This consists of lots of porn stars and models that are petite, small, “cute” and generally flat. Again, these women should have places to post their bodies and to feel beautiful and wanted for them, however places that sexualize them for appearing underage while skirting that “legality” are not things that should be allowed. Specifically because it brings unwanted negative attention to Lemmy, provides governments and companies reasons to disallow access to Lemmy, and over all provides less desirable people with a place they feel is accepting of their views.
So, the implication is “they’re almost jailbait while legally not being such.” Which is definitely a thing. They can, I guess, have an instance where that’s allowed since it isn’t “technically” illegal but is highly immoral and questionably unethical. However, in this case all I’m saying is that I can see why Blahaj defederated from it.
I was actually against blahajzone before reading this, it does make me think twice about it as I have heard about stuff like that on lemmynsfw (not that I’ve ever been there myself mind you). I recognize that people are entitled to their own fetishes as long as it’s between consenting adults, but stuff like fauxbait and related fetishes always seem suspect, it’s definitely right on the border of something. Like, yea, you’re free to get sexually excited by whatever you want, but that looks an awful lot like… something else. However, I recognize that most people into that stuff probably aren’t actual pedophiles, just like people into other questionable fetishes (rapekink, freeuse, raceplay, etc) may not ever engage in anything illegal, but fauxbait & others sure does look like… something else.
That seems like one community amongst many, not the instance as a whole. Though, admittedly (as long as they’re aware of it) allowing it is an implication of support.
It’s shown up multiple times on the trending and hit page, so I imagine they’re aware of it. The excuse of it being one community amongst many though is something that Blahaj has the ability to not support. There’s a lot of instances too where we could say it’s “one bad things amongst many good things” but that doesn’t make it ok…
You feeling grody about it doesn’t make it not ok either, though…
I mean, I guess you could be ok with it if you’re a pedo. Shit like this caused massive controversy for Reddit in the beginning, and it only leads to others with worse outlooks feeling safe here. I don’t know if you were around on Reddit during the r/thedonald period but that sub bred nothing but hate that quickly found a home to radicalize on the platform. Same went with Jailbait. It spawned spacedicks and other horrendous subs.
Also, as an instance dedicated to LGBT+ what if another instance was dedicated to hatred towards LGBT+? Should Blahaj continue to federate with them? What if I open a community dedicated to “communicating about how to kill a certain group?” It’s not illegal. Freedom of speech is important after all, but maybe at some point people stop just talking about something and start acting.
While the slippery slope argument can be applied to anything at the end of the day it’s really down to something super simple. This is one instance choosing to defederate from another. That’s their choice.