Hello world,
as many of you may already be aware, there is an ongoing spam attack by a person claiming to be Nicole.
It is very likely that these images are part of a larger scale harassment campaign against the person depicted in the images shared as part of this spam.
Although the spammer claims to be the person in the picture, we strongly believe that this is not the case and that they’re only trying to frame them.
Starting immediately, we will remove any images depicting “Nicole” and information that may lead to identifying the real person depicted in those images to prevent any possible harassment.
This includes older posts and comments once identified.
We also expect moderators to take action if such content is reported.
While we do not intend to punish people posting this once, not being aware of the context, we may take additional actions if they continue to post this content, as we consider this to be supporting the harassment campaign.
Discussion that does not include the images themselves or references that may lead to identifying the real person behind the image will continue to be allowed.
If you receive spam PMs please continue reporting them and we’ll continue working on our spam detections to attempt to identify them early before they reach many users.
Hmm.
The people receiving the spam are not being harassed, obviously.
The woman depicted is very likely the target of harassment.
Sharing the images depicting violence is tantamount to a threat of violence.
As admins, you’re not just witnesses but the stewards of a community and the representatives of many thousands of people in this matter.
Pre-empting what the police will do is not a reason not to report. You don’t know what they will do. They might do nothing at you would have wasted 15 minutes. On the other hand perhaps Nicole has been trying to get a restraining order against some creep but has been unable to due to lack of evidence.
I have spam in my email. Should I report that to the police as well?
There just isn’t enough for regular police to go on, without even considering jurisdiction. Cooperating with authorities is fine, but there’s not really anyone to proactively reach out to about this.
Yes. If you run an email server and one of the accounts has been used to perpetrate a harassment campaign including threats of violence then obviously you should report that.
Agreed, but there is no proof of this. We also don’t know their true identity to check with them directly.
The images did not depict violence directly, it was a gory image of a dead person. They were very likely sent by a copycat not involved in the original harassment campaign and intended to fuck up fediverse users more than anything else. They did not appear to imply any kind of threat.
This would require a lot more than 15 minutes to file a proper report. First we have to collect all relevant information that we have available and compile them in a format that can be submitted. Once we have this information we have to identify a police department to report this to. We are legally based in NL, as that’s where our non-profit Fedihosting Foundation is located. I’m based in Germany, so it would also be an option to report it here. The depicted person is claimed to be in Canada, so maybe this should be reported to a police department over there. Or maybe to all of them.
All of this would easily add up to 2 hours or more if you want to do it properly and not just look for 3 online forms to write “hey there is someone sending spam”.
If this was a paid job and I was doing this during working hours I wouldn’t mind, but all the time I spend here is taken out of my personal time, the same as with anyone else on our team, and also the same you’ll see with most other fediverse instances.
If we receive a request for information from (real) law enforcement we’ll be more than happy to provide relevant data, but doing this for the (perceived low) chance of that somehow being linked from a random police report is a fairly high time investment as described above.
Respectfully, I don’t share your assessment of the seriousness of the crime. You seem to be weighing the question of whether someone has been harassed or intimidated from the perspective of a “reasonable third party”. However, I suspect that the law assigns considerable weight to the question of whether the victim feels intimidated or harassed. For example, you’re correct that sharing the gore image is not a direct threat of violence, however I feel certain that the woman depicted in the earlier images taken from the live stream would feel concerned for their safety.
I would also like to clarify one aspect of which you may not be aware. It’s very easy to confirm the woman’s place of work beyond any reasonable doubt, with images she has posted to other platforms.
I understand that it’s unreasonable to say that you specifically or any admins of lemmy.world or any other instance should give up hours of your free time to make a police report.
However, as others in this thread have suggested this incident underlines the limited protections lemmy has against this type of attack and it seems likely that we will see a lot more.
I also respectfully disagree regarding the likelihood that reporting this crime could be useful. It’s not a question of “somehow being linked from a random police report”. If the victim ever does contact the police, which seems very likely to me, it’s extraordinarily likely that a report from lemmy would be identified as being related.
It’s not my intention to berate you personally over this, and as I mentioned above I acknowledge that it’s unreasonable to expect you personally to take action in this specific case. I am however concerned that Lemmy’s federated nature is not well suited to addressing this type of risk to members of our community.
Tell you what: log the time it takes, and I will personally pay you $60/hour for your time to make a proper report.
And no, I’m not being sarcastic.