I’m a staff software engineer at Sunrun, the USA’s largest residential solar installer.

I mostly work with kotlin, but also java, python, ruby, javascript, typescript. My hobby is picking up new hobbies. Currently bird photography and camping.

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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • …. That’s not what CSAM is. It’s literally in the name. abuse. CSAM requires abuse of a child. Just like pictures of your kids in the bath isn’t illegal, AI generated content is going to need to be provably linked to abuse in order to meet the definition. I seriously doubt it ever will be. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire situation, overreacted so much so that you might have gotten people in serious legal trouble, and are now trying to justify it because you think that the current solutions aren’t going to protect against CSAM.

    I literally linked a software that does what yours does, but is already used, already proven to work, and also has the benefit of being the backup to the hash based mechanism instead of being the primary mode of filtering.

    Dude, I was trying to be nice how I approached you earlier, but you clearly are unwilling to accept that you have made a massive mistake here, not only by not reading up on the laws, but not even fundamentally understanding the problem space. This is not good software engineering.






  • You may not have meant it, but you strongly implied something of the sort. But since this is not what you’re suggesting I’m curious to hear what your optimal approach to those problem would be here.

    Optimal approach is to use the existing systems that are used by massive corporations to solve this problem already. I know everyone on lemmy hates that, but this isn’t something to mess around with. The reason this is optimal is because NCMEC provides the hashes only to these companies. You’re not going to be able to get the hashes (this is a good thing… imagine some child abuser getting access to these hashes and then using them to evade detection). So if you can’t get these hashes (and you shouldn’t want them either) then you should use a service that has them. It is by far the best way to filter and has been proven time and time again to be successful.

    The easiest is CloudFlare’s, and yes, you will have to use them as your DNS which I also understand a vast majority of admins hate. But there are other options as well

    • PhotoDNA
    • Safer
    • Facebook PDQ

    Because access to the original hash databases is considered sensitive, NCMEC will not provide these to smaller platforms. Neither will Microsoft provide the source code of its PhotoDNA algorithm except to its most trusted partners, because if the algorithm became widely known, it is thought that this might enable abusers to bypass it.

    In that article, it actually points out that a solution called Safer that uses machine learning and image recognition has very flawed results and is incredibly biased. So if these massive platforms can’t get this kind of image recognition right then it’s probably best to not waste money and time on it. The article even points out that for smaller platforms it’s not worth it.

    We also know in general terms that machine learning algorithms for image recognition tend to be both flawed overall, and biased against minorities specifically. In October 2020, it was reported that Facebook’s nudity-detection AI reported a picture of onions for takedown. It may be that for largest platforms, AI algorithms can assist human moderators to triage likely-infringing images. But they should never be relied upon without human review, and for smaller platforms they are likely to be more trouble than they are worth


  • The problem is you aren’t warning people that deleting CSAM without following your applicable laws can potentially get people that use your tool thrown in jail. You went ahead and built the tool without detailing any of the applicable laws around it. Cloudflare explicitly calls out that in their documentation because it’s very important. I really like the stuff you put out, but this is not the way to do it. I know lots of people on Lemmy hate CF and any sort of large company, but running this stuff yourself without understanding the law is sure to get someone in trouble.

    I don’t even know why you think I was recommending for your system to forward the reports to the authorities. I didn’t sleep very much last night, so I must have glazed over it, but I see nowhere where I said that.


  • Cloudflare still has false positives, the NCMEC does not care if they get false positives. If you read some of those links I provided it wouldn’t be considered a generic filtering operation, from how I’m reading it at least. I wouldn’t take the chance, especially not with running the software on your own hardware in your own house, split from the server.

    I think you’re not in the US? So it’s probably different for your jurisdiction. Just want to make it clear that in the US, from what i’ve read up on, this would be considered against the law. You are running software to filter for CSAM, so you are obligated to report it. Up to 1 year jail time for not doing so.