And, if you are comfortable with sharing, what are some of the worst things that you’ve seen?
I moderate a few smaller but active ones. I don’t see a whole lot of bad stuff apart from the occasional garbage opinion such as [insert least favorite ideology here].
This might be because the places I mod are pretty chill in nature. I’m sure of the topic was something more volatile and spicy, such as politics, it could be a different story.
I don’t see disturbing stuff that often, usually few times a year, but it’s usually some very disgusting csam.
Most of the time it’s just spam and trolls, but from time to time these degenerates show up.
It doesn’t really have any lasting effect on me, I kinda manage to not think about it at all. I guess my aphantasia helps here as well, I think it’s much harder for folks who can visualise things in their mind.
Csam on lemmy?? What??
The fact that you aren’t aware is a good sign that mods/admins are doing their jobs.
There was a while after the Reddit exodus where apparently lots of CSAM was being posted. I never saw it personally, but apparently it was a big issue.
What is scam?
Csam= Child Sexual Abuse Material. It’s CP.
Ahhhh, kinda wish I hadn’t asked… But thanks for answering.
As far as I’ve seen the mods and admins have been doing a stellar job of removing it drom the platform.
The worst has probably been the CSAM and the detailed instructions on how to kill yourself or suicidal ideation.
In the end, to me, it’s just more content to remove, just like spam.
Most things are ads, spam or people reporting comments they politically disagree with.
There was a troll spamming cp some time ago, but that was before my time as a mod / admin.
people reporting comments they politically disagree with.
Wouldn’t this be mod abuse?
You might have misinterpreted it. It referes to users falsely reporting users they disagree with. This often happens in the context of political discussions.
What I didn’t mean is removing comments I personally disagree with. This would indeed be mod abuse.
Sorry I meant that idiots flooding mods with false reports is abuse of mods ie creating extra work for the mod and taking hsi time away from the actual job.
I can see threat actors using this tactic to wear down the mod team.
You are right. We had some of those. They’re gone now.
EDIT: I was confused, since mod abuse is usually associated with mods acting unprofessionally / in bad faith.
So far I’ve just seen some deeply racist memes and comments. Thankfully it hasn’t been very frequent, so it’s not really been anything I had to cope with mentally or anything.
When I volunteered as a new mod starting last year, I saw some horrific csam posts that I can’t forget, I just hope those who reported them have recieved some mental health support.
To cope, I hike to my local park, take edibles, try to do anything to keep me distracted but it’s hard to forget. Even as I sit here freezing in my chair the ticking of my clock is a deafening reminder of the garbage I’ve seen. It doesn’t help in that I’m an empath(I receive the pain of others) either so I just think about why these things happen and try to promote systems that prevent past mistakes from reoccurring.
A couple systems I’m aiming to improve is public education and mental health support. When people know how to better protect themselves and those most trustworthy nearest to them, the higher likelihood that atrocities like these can be prevented and stopped. That’s the hope anyways. No guarantee it’ll work.
It doesn’t help in that I’m an empath(I receive the pain of others)
Like a super power / supernatural kind of thing, or you mean that figuratively?
With our world becoming crueler it feels more like a curse
Woah what the hell? I’ve seen like 5 comments mentioning CSAM. I’m gonna need someone to elaborate on what the fuck was going on
Not an admin or moderator but dear god it must be difficult to cope mentally and emotionally for any and all moderators to see truly disturbing stuff. That’s a salute they don’t get enough credit for.
This community was included in that spamwave a few months ago. I saw a few CSAM here. We had to lock the entire community down to deal with it.
That spamwave at the time was happening in the entire fediverse btw.
What do you do with something as bad as that. Is there a way to report it to the authorities before you delete it?
Removed comments or posts (by mods) get logged in the modlog. So admins and mods can still view them.
I was wondering if the bad stuff gets reported to the police. Maybe, that’s up to the admins.
Well, we did report them to the admins. Afaik they said they reported it to the police.
I run a community that has like 8 posts, most by me, so never. I need to post again cause that Marvel game is dying.
