Researchers found CSAM within five minutes of searching Mastodon.

Mastodon, an alternative social network to Twitter, has a serious problem with child sexual abuse material according to researchers from Stanford University. In just two days, researchers found over 100 instances of known CSAM across over 325,000 posts on Mastodon. The researchers found hundreds of posts containing CSAM related hashtags and links pointing to CSAM trading and grooming of minors. One Mastodon server was even taken down for a period of time due to CSAM being posted. The researchers suggest that decentralized networks like Mastodon need to implement more robust moderation tools and reporting mechanisms to address the prevalence of CSAM.

  • thejevans
    1·
    1 year ago

    Investment in one or more centralized clearinghouses for performing content scanning (as well as investment in moderationtooling) wouldbebeneficialtotheFediverseasawhole. Given newcommercialentrants into the Fediverse such asWordPress,Tumblr and Threads, we suggest collaboration among these parties to help bring the trust and safety benefits currently enjoyed by centralized platforms to the wider Fediverse ecosystem.

    The last sentences in the paper.