Recently, the last CP addict idiot basically killed us. We always remove those posts when we get a report (we can't see them by our-self, that's the point), but we were swamped by other things, and we didn't catch this one in time. It's a free volunteer project after all.
Our host took down our server and our backup server. We didn't have an offline backup because it makes taking down bad content more work.
We are still struggling to go back up.
This is why you can't have nice things.
(and also, don't host your backup server with the same host)
Internet progress seems to resoundingly be going backwards. Remember when pastebin used to be super active? Hell, remember when google had informative search results?
Internet, computing, etc.. As time goes on and attestation catches on general purpose computing will die for the most part.
But maybe we'll see a renaissance of sorts? When the only sites that work on Firefox are fediverse and a few hobbyist sites and people need to go out of their way to find computers that they actually control we might undo the eternal September of the web as a whole.
All is part of the capitalization of the internet. People seek to make money and how they do it is not always morally or ethically sound.
The view of “the global village” with betterment for human society has become another rent seeker “getting my own” hustle culture. It’s the way people are I guess on the whole.
It's not as simple as capitalization, we had a long period of time where people were making fortunes but the tools actually worked.
Theres something deeper thats causing things like Google search refusing to show more than 12 or so results and them being lower quality. Causing YouTubes algorithm to recommend things you've already watched or just recommending a video over and over for weeks until you watch it to get rid of it.
I guess the thing is that the push is on for ever higher extraction and yields for managers/stakeholders/CEOs and to show it to shareholders and investors and the like. And with higher interest rates where money costs its only amplified I reckon.
I promote a video ad campaign for a client and its insane how much it is being shown for a few clicks. Ad revenue is probably going down in relative terms (or more effort for same results)
> Theres something deeper thats causing things like Google search refusing to show more than 12 or so results and them being lower quality.
That something is - wait for it - capitalization.
Google, YouTube and the rest of the Internet are drowning in low-quality, automated, yet monetized dreck. The signal-to-noise ration on the web has never been lower, and it's getting lower still.
AnonFiles was very sketchy. They had extremely generous file size limits and were apparently funded completely through donations. On their footer they linked to other file sharing sites, which linked to even more file sharing sites. All of them had the exact same layout and generous file size limits. They also shared the exact same IPs. There were around 15 of them. A lot of them impersonated other defunct file sharing websites which shut down such as MegaUpload. All of these sites are now offline. Make of this what you will, but to me it sounds like a honeypot.
Considering the plausibility of people downloading CP from government run sites over a government run anonymity network from a government run file host is interesting.
Supposedly, one of the biggest distributors of CSAM is US military networks. If you have access to them, you're not supposed to go trawling around just looking being curious because there's officially "need to know" stuff out there (and you don't need to know). Which makes it a great place to hide that sort of stuff.
I can’t speak to that generally, but in my anecdotal experience in 22 years in the US Military (in IT for most of that):
I dealt with one case that was completely horrific, and two minor. The horrific case involves the PRODUCTION of CP using other service members children via the spouses daycare, then distribution from our network. The other two were relatively simple storage/redistribution via workstations.
It happens, but from my viewpoint if it’s that rare it must be extremely rare elsewhere if your statement is true.
That's a pretty routine thing. Remember how the government sold arms to Iran, or facilitated drug trade in Central America, or trafficked firearms for Mexican cartels? It's different when they do it, because they are the good guys.
Agreed. The moment i saw AnonFiles i was out of there, even considered uploading the declaration of indepence in pdf form to get my social credits up.
I dont know where the servers were, but i feel like it was used for less lovely purposes by the owners and a lack of identifiers & internet curated mess would obfuscate law enforcement's efforts
Edit: my theory however falls flat if there were multiple websites, since having a one large database would be in their best interest. You could argue that there were multiple entities self-hosting the same thing, but why would they link to eachother? Coupled with the VPN ad, sounds like data harvesting all around (honeypot or not)
It looks like from June 24th 2022 through August 10th 2023 (or 16th, likely whenever they changed their index to announce the shutdown) they only listed filechan.org and letsupload.cc.
All of the file sharing sites listed do appear to be parodies of other popular websites, some of them file sharing. They also appear to all be identical except for the site name and styling. All of the file sharing sites except for anonfiles.com now return NXDOMAIN. (ovpn.com appears to still exist.)
The obvious parodies of file sharing websites does call into question their assertion that they didn't want abuse.
It does sound fishy, but why a honeypot? Why not a place to hide traffic? With populair large up/downloads, it's practically impossible to trace all of it. Or perhaps it was a communication board for some shady, rich organization.
I will say that, though I hadn't heard of this site, it seems like they were trying to do something decent and not profit-driven (free file sharing without advertising, badgering you to make an account, etc) and I'm metaphorically pouring one out for another nice service that the world had to go and mess up.
For anyone wanting to know what the site used to look like, here's a random Wayback Machine snapshot from 2021:
I can get down with that sentiment. Sadly it’s just not something that can exist without being ruined, but I admire the fact someone wanted to try with (hopefully) positive intentions.
20 years ago I setup an anonymous FTP server just see what would happen. It lasted a few weeks before I had to shut it down but it was an interesting experiment in humanity. Certainly there may be a good way to provide a service like this but it needs an incredible amount of thought.
Some people just need to execute on an idea to learn. I don't quite get the pessimistic comments here. I don't really blame anonfiles for trying. It certainly provided a lot of experience and certainly opened their eyes on how difficult it is to offer a service like this. This experience will help them to build something better in the future even if the next thing they build has nothing to do with distributing files for anonymous users.
I used to run one for years in that time frame (actually earlier). Basically it was a bunch of warez in hidden directories which was nice because I also wanted photoshop.
I found it funny. I'd go in and be like "oh look, I've been looking for that software. Thanks hackers!"
I still have an anonymous SFTP server. Bots would find it and not know what to do with it as they only how to exploit shell access. I was hoping they would upload interesting exploits but many years later, still nothing. Bots would upload to FTP assuming it was also available over HTTPS. Nowadays I use it as one of many learning tools to see how many bots I can cause to get stuck since SSH does not encrypt the initial client/server negotiation which includes a version banner.
This makes me want to open a random FTP server for fun. And/or a simple website where you can upload or download anything (not privately, to a shared folder)
Probably nothing would happen but it would be interesting.:)
How so? Atleast one guy did something that made you shut it down. What insight does that give? Surely you knew there is at least one bad guy using the internets before the experiment?
It wasn't one guy that made me shut it down, it's the pattern of use that typically comes with offering a service like this. At the time, it wasn't my primary focus, just a one off, "What would happen if I did this?" type of experiment.
Yes, I knew that there could be abuse, but I didn't know how the abuse would come. As I said, I learned, it cost me very little to do.
> What insight does that give?
For one, how do you maintain a service that actually has traffic. At the time I had very little experience with mass amounts of users. You can build personal websites all day long and still never know what it is like to handle high levels of traffic.
Additionally, given the type of content I received on the service, how could I handle the patterns of use better and encourage the sharing I wanted from users? Given the type of content I got very clear patterns developed that if I wanted to expand I could have.
> Surely you knew there is at least one bad guy using the internets before the experiment?
Yea, there are people with ill intent on the internet and they are constantly attempting to break into my servers as we speak. Why would I use that as a reason to not offer something online? This reason alone, shouldn't be a deterrent.
Did you require accounts? Otherwise it could in theory be one guy I guess since the service was anonymous (however, unlikely, of course).
I ran a Tor exit node once. However I pulled out once I realized what kind of traffic I could be relaying. I guess it is a similar learning experience.
I never understood why people single out Tor for this logic. Obviously Comcast and Verizon are doing the same thing; even the Tor traffic itself traverses their networks. Half the internet is on Cloudflare and it's not just the good half. If you build a technology like TLS or ssh or BitLocker, some of the people who use it will be bad. As is the case with web browsers and RAM and hammers.
The proportion of disreputable things on Tor might be higher, but it's a difference in degree, not in kind. And the proportion of dissidents trying not to be killed by their own government and Ukrainians trying not to be killed by Russians is higher too.
> I never understood why people single out Tor for this logic.
Because the other examples you mention, are corporations with lawyers. They (usually) won’t get a random police raid, and even if, it’d not be as potentially disastrous as it would be for a random person.
Tor exit nodes don't usually get a random police raid either.
But in any event that seems like more of an argument for not running one at your house than for having some moral objection in this case but not to any of those corporations transferring the same content.
But it isn't about the laws, or why isn't that a problem for Cloudflare or Comcast? It's about police departments doing what they ought not to do out of incompetence or a desire to harass innocent people who inconvenience them without violating any laws. Which they could just as easily be doing because of Napoleon syndrome or lobbyist pressure from the RIAA.
But then what difference does the content make? It's not like they don't still put on their ridiculous assault garb or steal your stuff when they want to unjustifiably grief you over a third party's violation of some copyright law.
Here’s a hole to throw bytes into! I’m going to turn my back so I don’t see you, but I’m responsible for what’s in this byte hole so pinky promise you won’t throw disgusting vile bytes into it!
The world, famous for its love of all things disgusting and vile:
Throws disgusting vile bytes into the hole.
Oh no! How could I have foreseen this?!
I’m sure they had good intentions, but I’m sorry, I would never make this, ever.
It's not that 99% of people are crazy or stupid, but you're bound to attract the remaining 1%. But why? That's the question. The site is not even on the dark web, I think these guys have a lot of resources to hide their files. I know about freenet, I used to use it but it was boring so I left. That was 20 years ago. Surely the Dark Web has grown since then.
I'm writing this after finding the site closed. Now I am going to pay for some space to send large files to people who are struggling to use Dropbox on their shiny silver laptops.
I have never heard of this service before. But this part in the end:
> This is not the kind of work we imagine when acquiring it and recently our proxy provider shut us down.
Really? You created a website where people could anonymously upload files to share with others. What did you really expect was going to happen? It's kinda naive to think a service like this would be all happy times in the world we have today.
I also haven't heard of it, but I'm curious of the "when acquiring it" part of the quote.
Did the current owner not create the site? Did they acquire an anonymous file sharing site and are now shutting it down for the predictable anonymous file sharing issues?
Perhaps it's an English translation issue or something, but, in common parlance, the word "acquire" means to buy or obtain from elsewhere. (I don't think they are referring to the domain name itself, because that has nothing to do with the complaints listed.)
I was confused as well because I remember anonfiles being around at least a decade, which seems to be the case (first archive.org snapshots are from 2011). I suppose it does mean that the current owner bought it but it doesn't seem like they made any major changes. The layout and functionality of the site stayed pretty much the same for the entirety of its existence.
I really don't think it's some horrendous oversight to expect that people will be kind to a service that you offer.
If you offer anonymous and free image uploading it's not wrong to assume that not 100% of your traffic will be pornographic uploads and I also don't think it's wrong that if after years of your offering, if you get to the point where all of your uploads are porn, that you feel the need to shutdown your service.
Nobody is entitled to do bad things with good tools.
Anything illegal on these forums is going to be encrypted with the decrypt passwords shared over tor sites. It's not like people are posting a cleartext version of stolen_credit_cards.csv
The operators don't know what's being posted. This is a problem because it's what's called "inducement of a crime" - it's like if you say "We are a bar that doesn't check IDs" - you have a responsibility that comes with the operations. If you have a bunch of underage people in the bar because of your policy of not checking IDs, that responsibility falls on you. When you choose to forego responsibilities, you get that secondary liability.
See Kim Dotcom, MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 and Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC. The courts have spoken many times on this and with a single voice.
You can have a service, then turn your head close your eyes and say "we'll just let freedom happen" but that doesn't excuse you from being responsible for what happens.
> This is a problem because it's what's called "inducement of a crime" - it's like if you say "We are a bar that doesn't check IDs"
Obviously operating on another level but what's the difference with Whatsapp saying we can't read your messages, and the other even more privacy focused alternatives?
Does WA check if CP.zip is being sent through groups ?
It probably has more to do with the stated business rather than what's possible. For example, nothing is stopping you from going on whatsapp and, one hexadecimal byte at a time, writing out the entirety of a zip file full of whatever illegal stuff you want. Then, there's nothing stopping people from copying those bytes into a hex editor and recreating your stuff. This was used to great effect with DeCSS leading to the ideal of "illegal primes". The USG would have to ban typing any string of hex into anything to make this actually have teeth. But then you could move to binary, octal, brainfuck code that creates the file with shifts, etc.
But, with a company that hosts files you are liable for checking those files. There's also nuance here: you can't check everything all the time. You also can't check encrypted shit. But if you make no effort (see: the bar example) then that rises to inducement. Anonfiles, for example, is negligent in this regard. There's no law preventing you from allowing people to store encrypted files but there should be a way to not only comply with valid, warrant-provided, law enforcement requests but also keep track of such "prolific" uploaders as they are most likely uploading shit you don't want.
Source: I work in an industry that, unfortunately, has to deal with this stuff all the time. The internet is a sick place. Our legal team briefed us on our responsibility (in terms of storage and processing) along with the correct chain-of-command should something come up. Of course, we also have therapy available which is used more often than you'd think. In our case there's also some protection afforded to us for the things that may be stored because we comply with various law enforcement agencies when necessary. Posted further up you see:
> Recently, the last CP addict idiot basically killed us. We always remove those posts when we get a report (we can't see them by our-self, that's the point), but we were swamped by other things, and we didn't catch this one in time. It's a free volunteer project after all.
Which tells you they had zero idea what they were doing. If you're not hosting your anonymous service on an derelict oil platform deep in international waters you have a responsibility to get the correct legal counsel and set up a system for handling chomos. Ignorance is not an excuse, "volunteer" is not an excuse, AND you shouldn't make a service that protects chomos.
Anyone can upload encrypted data to anything. You can do the same thing with Pastebin or Google Drive or Reddit or AWS. And there are many lawful reasons to want to be anonymous.
> See Kim Dotcom.
Megaupload got in trouble because their employees actively knew about and participated in infringement. Mega.com, which encrypts everything by default so they don't know what it is, is... still there?
mega.com isn't an uploads site anymore and those domains were seized in 2012 by the us doj.
The point wasn't that encryption is possible but instead that it's a de facto practice so the operators don't actually know the breakdown of the content being uploaded unless they're only considering the cleartext.
Furthermore, this doesn't protect them from being responsible for the content.
You can disagree, but until you can form a majority opinion on the SCOTUS, your thoughts don't actually matter.
I'm not a lawyer but I did a few podcast episodes on this topic a few years ago so I did about a month of research on it. The hosting providers are responsible for the content within some reasonable expectation of how the site is structured.
Isn't the whole point of DMCA Safe-Haven rules, that providers are not responsible for the content they transmit...? As long as they respond to law enforcement to the best of their ability, of course (i.e. taking down after being notified). I agree that encryption is not exempting them from enacting takedowns, and that intention matters (as discussed in the MEGA case), but that should be about it.
If I build a filesharing site with clearly-good intentions, my employees don't promote piracy, and the content is encrypted, as long as I take shit down when authorities tell me it's Bad I should be in the clear, surely...?
That's probably fine. AWS S3 or say Google Cloud or Dropbox doesn't have these issues.
There's plenty of long lived providers.
That's different from if you had a service called, say, pirate-share with a search function that has options like "artist" and "director". These difference matter.
As far as I know, the courts have looked at anonymous file sharing sites as closer to the second group than the first.
I remember when the internet was basically only anonymous and I think it was a better time and that's kinda why I like tor. The problem is most people seem to only go there for crime as opposed to some weird ideological commitment to how online engagement should exist.
It'd be nice if there could be a more healthy balance between anonymity and crime that's more encouraging for people to be anonymous but somehow less supportive of criminal activity.
Basically I think "influencer culture" and branding oneself has destroyed things
> That's different from if you had a service called, say, pirate-share with a search function that has options like "artist" and "director". These difference matter.
Perversely, though.
Grokster and BitTorrent are largely used for the same things and they both have infringing and non-infringing uses. Grokster lost because they promoted the infringing uses. But why do we actually care about this?
It's not as if copyright infringement never existed before Grokster and nobody has been able to figure out how to use BitTorrent for it because Bram Cohen never mentioned it.
So all the rule does is impose censorship. Because otherwise the creators of these technologies would be outspoken proponents of copyright reform. But then their lawyers tell them to STFU, because if they say that existing copyright terms are morally unjustifiable and the RIAA is a pack of vultures who deserve to go bankrupt and things to that effect, plaintiffs will argue that they're promoting infringement and sue them for their political opinions. Especially if they fail to be perfectly articulate and precise while expressing that sentiment.
Is it not a de facto prohibition on developers and businesses expressing public support for the Pirate Party?
> those domains were seized in 2012 by the us doj.
The ones where they weren't encrypting the stuff.
> Furthermore, this doesn't protect them from being responsible for the content.
Laws commonly have knowledge requirements. If you go to the UPS store and ask them to deliver a metal cage clearly containing a screaming woman who has been kidnapped, and they do it, they're going to be in trouble. If you go and ask them to deliver a brown cardboard box of contents unspecified, that's a different matter, even if unbeknownst to them it turns out to contain some contraband.
Yea, CP on anonymous and messed up shares has been a problem for just about forever.
Saw a company that accidently DMZ'd their printer with a public IP, and this had to be over 15 years ago at this point. Had anony ftp open on it, and yea, exactly what you expect happened.
> I really don't think it's some horrendous oversight to expect that people will be kind to a service that you offer.
Its not like anonymous file hosting on the internet was a new thing two years ago. It very much is a major oversight to offer (or acquire) a service in an existing, established segment and have no idea what the usage patterns and challenges in that segment are.
> If you offer anonymous and free image uploading it's not wrong to assume that not 100% of your traffic will be pornographic uploads
Its file, not just image, hosting, but, yeah, you should probably assume that the stuff that the most controversial aspect of it is that it is just porn will be toward the milder end. And their piece doesn't say “porn” it says “abuse”.
In theory nothing assuming it involves only consenting adults. In practice it’s very exploitative of vulnerable people to such a degree that it becomes ethically fraught.
Sorry, I replied before reading the whole thread. Well. I have none of those good accouts on good sites like google or 365ish like everyone else. So yes. Sometimes I don't know how to send large files. Sure I can make a page on github, sure I can upload the file to IPFS, put it on a link and make it look like a normal link. This idea just came to me as I was writing this post
Wikipedia still keeps tabs on who is updating what via IP tracking. It's anonymous (arguably pseudonymous if the IP is considered a name) but they still pay attention to users doing things.
> We have auto banned contents of hundreds of thousands files.
> Banned file names and also banned specific usage patterns ...
I don't think IPs are banned outright, but they lose the right to edit without an account. I think my mobile provider uses CGNAT and I can't edit anonymously on cellular.
> I don't think IPs are banned outright, but they lose the right to edit without an account.
By default, blocking an IP or IP range prevents users from those IPs from making edits, with or without an account, or creating accounts. Similarly, if an account is blocked, any IPs they've edited from recently get blocked as well.
All of these functions can be customized on a per-block basis; blocks on shared IP ranges are usually configured to allow account creation and logged-in edits.
It’s like the difference between opening a library and a public toilet in the middle of Times Square, and expecting the toilet to be used what it was intended for and not get crusted with shit.
I am reminded when someone on reddit created a site that would show a waterfall of thumbnail tile live updates of all the new public images uploaded to imgur.
It did not last very long when it became clear what kind of stuff would be rolling down the screen.
One of my first "projects" was a proxy server through which people could access sites blocked in their country. This was 20+ years ago. When I started logging what people were accessing, search terms and all that I quickly shut it down. Perversion on a whole 'nother level
20 years ago I launched a site that allowed users to upload arbitrary files. It was 99% pirated software/music, viruses and pornography. This is nothing new.
I have an idea for a filesharing site where the files must be encrypted. The server tries to parse the file using ffmpeg, ghostscript, libreoffice ect. and if it can read it the file is rejected. Similarly if a decryption key can be provided for any md5 then it is deleted. The hash for every file will be public. Known illegal md5s are blocked/reported. Doesn't need to be md5 specifically. This completely solves all moderation issues with the caveat than anyone who can open the file can also delete it. Not sure how that could make money either.
You can at best save log2(n)-1.4 bits per entry using smarter encoding compared to a naive list. That's perhaps a factor of 2-3x, depending on list size and acceptable false positive rate. For example if you have a list of a billion entries and accept a one in a million false positive rate, the naive list needs 30+20=50 bits, while an ideal encoding will need 21.4 bits, a 57% reduction.
So I don't think bloom filters have a significant impact on the manageability of those lists. Though I doubt the storage size will be the main concern, compared to the effort of adding entries to that list.
This is enough information to find the file identified by its File Handle on the server, then download it, verify the Condensed MAC of the overall file, unobfuscate the File Key, then decrypt the file using
the File Key and IV.
It should be noted that everything after an anchor hash (#) in the URL is not sent to the MEGA
servers and is kept locally in the client’s browser[0]
Didn't think of that. So I guess my idea isn't adding too much. Just a lot of compute without so much in return. It still simplifies moderating the files, however.
This would simply mean your server gets pwned at the speed of light. There is no way you could ever keep up to date with every security patch across that many integrations on one public-facing server. The compute would be expensive too, but that would almost be an afterthought to the first problem.
I can copy code that parses the files from these projects without having to execute any programs ie. not actually opening any files. Or you could just set up two servers. Servers A recieves the file from the client and sends it to server B. Server B does not have any network access except to server A. It reads the file, and sends back a magic number to A indicating if the file is good or 0 if it is bad. If server A recieves any other response it wipes server B. This could also just be a VM. And yeah compute would be pretty high. This is just a way to completely solve the responsibility problem. (for one definition of responsibility, that is, which is open to debate, surely.)
Domain for sale huh? Sell it to the wrong person (and I doubt anyone else is even remotely interested) and you got tens of thousands of files that you can replace with malware and nobody is going to be any wiser about it.
I've often thought about offering a similar service, but the abuse potential has always stopped me.
I've noodled with a blockchain type system which allows blob uploads as part of the chain, but I haven't really deployed it and publicized it, because of the abuse potential.
That was quick. Not surprising though, there was plenty of copyrighted and illegal content being uploaded to anonfiles. The name itself didn’t too much to discourage it.
I wouldn't take a job with 100k salary either, regardless of tasks. Now if that was 500? Call me admin@shadyuploads.com. (domain is available, I just checked).
Exactly this. I used to work for them and the support team had a direct line to the vice department if someone had uploaded CP again. We also built a photoDNA based detection system to automatically flag and report suspect images. The thing was definitely not cheap at WeTransfer scale though.
We had no illusion that we could catch everything, especially if they were using proper encryption. If you can break modern encryption quickly enough to do it at 400 files per second then there are way more profitable things to do with that ability than running a file transfer service.
But even so there were several alerts per week. For comparison, we were doing around 40 million transfers per month at the time, so ~10 million per week.
Well, lot of grey stuff can be shared with little-to-no restrictions over the internet (any pirated stuff goes pretty much unpunished, except for the occasional exemplary lawsuits). If you are paranoid, there are lotsa VPNs for affordable prices, with various anonymity levels. The only thing that really needs such anonymity to share is hard illegal stuff, which will put you in prison if you get caught. Such sites don't really have any other realistic usecase, so not really sure what were they thinking...
I agree with you in principle, but sometimes I get my "anonymous" mood and only use Whonix, anonymous imageboards and share files using solutions similar to anonfiles. I don't really have anything to hide, I just want to spite the Googles of the world.
I don't understand how these shady sites are monetized. Through shady ads from other shady services? How are these shady ad networks operating? I've been led to belive that operating a file sharing site would be quite expensive with all the bandwidth and storage needs.
That makes sense. If you are a mafia type that needs to send hundreds of gigabytes of contemporaneous data to others secretly and sneakernet is too slow, then throw up an "anonymous" file sharing site, advertise it a bit, let the creeps and weirdos use it to flood out the actual payload from online watchdogs and then let it fall to pieces when it has served its purpose.
Kind of like when Bitcoin was used primarily for the drug trade in the silk road days.
Anonfiles as a file upload site operated in one shape or another for over a decade, which is more than most companies manage. Even when it switched hands, the core concept stayed the same, so I'm not sure if it's accurate to say that it wasn't viable in the long term.
I'm very surprised. So far I thought file abuse was a thing of the past. A time when people used to know what a 'file' was. When I look at my kids and their friends 2 generations older or younger, I see people who live in file-less world. Content just exists within their phone apps. A file is something not even in their imaginary field. With all that said, I wonder who are these people flooding file sharing services nowadays, and the type of file they are sharing...
Very well, it would remove the site operators obligation and capability of removing anything, and their activity would no longer rely on appeasing a hosting provider at all
I'm not sure this theory would stand up if you actually tried it. If you just make something immutable storage my expectation would be the law would say "well it's up to you to make really sure you're entitled to store things in it before they go in", not "Well why didn't you say so? Oh well put anything you like in there in that case".
what do you mean "tried it"? this reality already exists for a long time now
in this system design, anonfiles wouldn't be hosting it, any Section 230 exception problem would be the IPFS node's problem
and its not even about the legal aspect? its about working smarter not harder. what you are saying, to me, sounds similar to "this person made an online store to get around the zoning procedures of a brick and mortar store" never considering that they never ever considered making a brick and mortar store to begin with and would find the administration entirely unappealing and unrelated to fulfilling their vision
I think the issue they have with your post is that you havn't explained why you think that anonfiles are victims (of what?) and why you think that HN is blaming them, and that you are refering to HN as a collective. This is a common pattern on reddit. The moderation here selects primarily for "convers[ing] curiously."[0] I don't know if the same can be said for reddit.
Of course, "don't be snarky" cuts both ways, and I don't necessarily agree with GP's language, although I think pointing out redditisms is in itself fair game.
i made the comment because the OP article was about anonfiles (a totally free service) shutting down due to unrelenting abuse. and rather than the comments talking about how unfortunate that abuse is or trying to offer a solution they instead basically say "well you made a public thing, fuck around and find out ig"
They bought the website, they didn't "make" anything. That was in the OP. You also can't take their word at face value. They certainly knew what the site was in part used for, and accept bitcoin donations for that exact reason. They also linked to/sold ads(?) for suspicious file sharing sites, (their own competitors) which has been pointed out here. And even your claim that they shut down due to abuse isn't a given — did they shut down or were they shut down by their provider? Or did something else entirely happen? We don't know, and it's fair to have multiple views on the topic, and even to be critical of the developers. Telling "hn" simply to "do better," without any explaination of what you realy mean and why you think that, isn't actionable. As a (former) user of anonfiles, I am sad they shut down, but I am aware that they were very suspicious compared to similar sites like catbox, who have a blog, FAQ and patreon. Nor am I surprised at all by their end. I think many are in the same situation in terms of their thinking.
Eh, when it comes to individual actions I don't like blaming the victim. But when it comes to a business enterprise offering public services I will 100% blame the victim. This includes sole proprietorships.
When it comes to the world outside my door, I expect the rule of law to keep me relatively safe against the actions of criminals, and the fault of any action is that of the criminals.
This breaks down on a multinational internet. Not only are the police unable to protect you, by enabling particular kinds of criminal actions you can de facto be complicit in their execution. Some dude in Russia is never going to jail for the CP on your server... but you are.
Police typically act after a crime is committed, possibly during but definitely not before unless they are explicitly tasked with that (for instance: to protect elected official).
Recently, the last CP addict idiot basically killed us. We always remove those posts when we get a report (we can't see them by our-self, that's the point), but we were swamped by other things, and we didn't catch this one in time. It's a free volunteer project after all.
Our host took down our server and our backup server. We didn't have an offline backup because it makes taking down bad content more work.
We are still struggling to go back up.
This is why you can't have nice things.
(and also, don't host your backup server with the same host)