After trying endlessly for two years to run a file sharing site with user anonymity we have been tired of handling the extreme volumes of people abusing it and the headaches it has created for us. Maybe it is hard to understand but after tens of million uploads and many petabytes later all work of handling abuse was automated through all available channels to be fast as possible. We have auto banned contents of hundreds of thousands files. Banned file names and also banned specific usage patterns connected to abusive material to the point where we did not care if we accidental delete thousands of false positive in this process. Even after all this the high volume of abuse will not stop. This is not the kind of work we imagine when acquiring it and recently our proxy provider shut us down.
This can not continue.
Domain 4sale.
Classic “this is why we can’t have nice things” moment
Tragedy of the Commons.
Sometimes I wonder, considering how high the volume of the abuse, how much of the “abuse” is copyright holders purposefully flooding such services with shit like CP to force a shutdown.
Like, either there’s fucking millions upon millions of pedos out there, or they have the financial backing of a giant corporation and/or government.
That strikes me as really out there. I think the reality is that there’s a lot of people into CP sadly – as an absolute but not relative number – and you don’t need many out there to have a prolific amount of content, which we know from our own special interest cases.
This is what always unnerves me about privacy tech. I always feel the pull of using high level encryption with whatever I’m doing – file storage, communication, etc – but a part of me is always saddened at the same time with how much abuse is effectively facilitated by anonymity and privacy.
But as the horrors of the dark web have shown, it’s a battle that law enforcement will never win – our most effective weapon as a society against CP and related abuse is
Chris Hansen(I shouldn’t joke) …is engaging with and changing the material causes of this phenomenon. There will always be tools for sickos; the challenge is to prevent people from becoming as sick as they are, and when sick, finding ways to prevent them from abusing others.Sorry for slightly OT rant lol.
Probably, it’s a really obvious and effective way to attack a website. I hear any small imageboard that tries to start up has this problem too. Any shady organization with no ethics can basically use this to shut down anything that allows user content and doesn’t have huge moderation resources.
Sadly even if 0.1 percent of the world population is a disgusting pedo that’s still 9 million people, even more unfortunate is that the actual percentage is somewhere in the 1-3 percent range.
Their API was too easy to abuse, I wrote some scripts to batch upload to these hosts. Anonfiles is just one name, rapidsha.re was another one for example. You could dork for the API manual content and find more hosts that were actually anonfiles. Now all of these are gone, it was a nice host.
I really liked it I used it if I need to send some 100 mb files to friends god I will miss that site it was great
May I introduce you to one of the many wormhole client?
Ayyy i remember that place. That’s where the OG netflix ripping tool from scene was. Doesn’t work anymore sadly.
Curious if their proxy host was cloudflare or DDoS-Guard (Russian) or even a lesser known service.
Cloudflare (American) is a cancer in this case, cause they have an auto-ban feature, which instantly checks hashes of files in a blacklist and warns domain admins with following ban of dashboard. And this not only goes to CSAM.
Yet most of the streaming sites use it.( yes i know streaming sites don’t host stuff on their own). there are only a few which can afford a paid cdn.
they are smartNjalla 💪
And thus the true nature of humanity reveals itself, as it always does. Usually people who experience this go from liberal to conservative. Being liberal requires holding the delusion that people are naturally good.
holding the delusion that people are naturally good
Nope! Just recognizing the truth that I, within myself, can be better and that I can accept the idea of being taken advantage of by the occasional bad faith actor in exchange for being able to be part of a broader community of people who do the right thing most of the time.
Cynicism is laziness masquerading as intellectualism. It’s the “step 1: give up!” of philosophies.
You should read stirner.
I think the notion that humans are evil means you must be a conservative is laughable honestly. I’m a communist and I certainly don’t believe humans are naturally good or selfless in any way.
All socialist thought is innately humanist, because collectivism can not work without the assumption that people will at least choose to be good when it’s the easier path, but yes, the idea that because a minority will abuse the system if you let them you must be a conservative is…
Well, not surprising from a rot-brain.
Can’t say I’m surprised that a file sharing site that advertises complete anonymity was being used to spread illegal and I’m guessing disgusting things.
I’m surprised that anyone thought it was a good idea though.
A file sharing site with anonymity is a good idea. The assholes who abuse it is why we can’t have good things.
When it says abuse etc it means like actually gross more illegal than pirated content correct. I believe so but am curious.
That’s why it’s not a good idea though, because complete anonymity is of course going to be a calling card for the worst of the worst illegal content.
