QUESTION: It's interesting to consider the bias of surveys results from people voting on what they think the org wants to hear....
I've never had a single piece of CSAM detected on my instance (fetish anime/AI art excluded) so while it's a very high risk of exploitative material being posted in the fediverse, it's a very low incident issue (last week another oz admin had to escalate to the AFP so not zero)... so how do I answer the question of it's importance?
RESPONSE:
IFTAS is a critical service by a solid team. I've personally made very solid use of.. and if your administrator isn't at least reading/using the services, they are missing out.
My take on them isn't a good news story but speaks to the complexity of trying to find the right people to do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons (and get paid).
Starting context,
@npub1y2r2...kvzk has done non-stop engagement and surveys from admins/moderation staff from mastodon instances on what they want/need/feel... and one of the primary concerns (because of course it is) was abusive material detection/reporting.
and they build a roadmap to address those major concerns... "Our 2025/2026 budget plan with Content Classification Service (CCS) included is $1.2M"
Now there is a problem here... Illegal material is like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent of the media promoted to the timeline (if your admin maintains a mature block list -- something IFTAS offers).
Threat modeling and risk management is an art not a science when spending that much time and money on something that nobody notices is the correct thing to do morally/ethically (as a professional/mature ecosystem).
but CCS isn't the only issue on the list of requests from fediverse staff, and there is a question if/when IFTAS reach that money, could that money "better spent" on the other concerns that have been highlighted at the expensive of that problem.
I don't have an answer to that... the written reference material about moderation burnout and internal conflict resolution has helped me numerous times, and I hope the core foundational projects stick around.
I love IFTAS and I hope they find a solution to their financial problems.
