this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by mp3@lemmy.ca to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
 

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.

domain@anonfiles.com

all 24 comments
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[–] ShrimpsIsBugs@feddit.de 160 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Classic "this is why we can't have nice things" moment

[–] neutron@thelemmy.club 20 points 1 year ago

Tragedy of the Commons.

[–] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 75 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 44 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A file sharing site with anonymity is a good idea. The assholes who abuse it is why we can't have good things.

[–] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 11 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Blxter@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 year ago

When it says abuse etc it means like actually gross more illegal than pirated content correct. I believe so but am curious.

[–] neutron@thelemmy.club 14 points 1 year ago

It's nice to have an ideal and wanting to contribute. Dealing with constant abuse and threat to your physical safety, mental health, financial and legal liability, etc., is not what everyone has in mind at start.

And this goes to Lemmy instance admins too. It's not supposed to be anonymous, but the federated nature makes spreading content with malicious intent very easy.

[–] metaltoilet@beehaw.org 40 points 1 year ago

What a shame. Stupid fucking pedos.

[–] KDE@monyet.cc 28 points 1 year ago

That's sad A lot of stuff was hosted on it from the tor network

[–] Ejh3k@midwest.social 12 points 1 year ago

I am very proud to say that I wasn't even aware that abusive material filenames had a certain pattern. Thought never crossed my mind.

[–] Synnr@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Curious if their proxy host was cloudflare or DDoS-Guard (Russian) or even a lesser known service.

[–] Cannizzaro@feddit.ch 21 points 1 year ago

they are smart

[–] bear_with_a_hammer@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Cannizzaro@feddit.ch 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] totallynotfbi@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

God damn, this will definitely break a lot of DDL shares - I know that, for a couple of forums, Anonfiles was the host that the majority of uploaders used.

[–] TheObserver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago

Ayyy i remember that place. That's where the OG netflix ripping tool from scene was. Doesn't work anymore sadly.

[–] Mixel@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] tk1337@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

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.