Topic: If you're sharing NSFW art, MEGA.nz is dangerous

Posted under General

Closest I can find to an actual guideline against NSFW:

What you can't do

  • 13 You can't, and will ensure that no users within a business account, of which you are administrator:
    • 13.6 use our website, mobile apps, API, or any service, including, without limitation, any communication tools available through the website, our mobile apps, or our API, or any forum, chat facility or message centre that we provide:
      • 13.6.1 to store, use, download, upload, share, access, transmit, or otherwise make available, data in violation of any law in any country (including to breach copyright or other intellectual property rights held by us or anyone else);
      • 13.6.4 to store, use, download, upload, share, access, transmit, or otherwise make available, unsuitable, offensive, obscene or discriminatory information of any kind

3D artist ConnivingRat got all of his videos taken down, his account banned, and (if the error message is to be believed) his "full details, including IP address, have been provided to the authorities".

So yeah, maybe use Dropbox or Catbox or something.

Updated

No, for "objectionable content". All you have to do is report something a few times and an automated system will either ban it or a cheap, wornout human will glance at it and quickly decide if it should be banned and if it might be illegal.

I always thought Mega was supposed to be one of those "censorship resistant" file hosting services...

faucet said:
I always thought Mega was supposed to be one of those "censorship resistant" file hosting services...

Well...

The Mega team indicated that some companies, such as film studios, will have direct access to remove files if they discover the encryption keys online and determine that the content infringes their copyright. Dotcom added that if such companies want to use that tool they would have to agree, prior to receiving access, not to sue Mega or hold the site accountable for the actions of its users.[44]

ConnivingRat only has one thing under feral, but a few things under human, so maybe that counted? He also has eighteen images under cock and ball torture, which could be seen as too violent.

strikerman said:
Well...

Might be a Nintendo thing then, since they've apparently been targetting a few things, but I thought that was centered on things that get profit. Who knows if that "File deleted, account closed" message is just a generic one for any account that gets closed regardless of the reason. Mega cannot be sued for the actions of the users, but if they decided to say "Fuck you this user won't be punished for copyright infringment" the might be vulnerable.

furrin_gok said:
Who knows if that "File deleted, account closed" message is just a generic one for any account that gets closed regardless of the reason.

It'd be oddly fear-mongering for their generic message to have a warning that the user's info was sent to authorities.

strikerman said:
So yeah, maybe use Dropbox or Catbox or something.

Catbox is fine, but for some reason Dropbox links no longer load, at least on my end.

strikerman said:
...So yeah, maybe use Dropbox or Catbox or something.

Looking at Catbox's ToS in their FAQ, it's a no-go for them.

Banned Content
[..]bestiality and sexual violence. I will purge your account/uploads if anything you upload violates these rules. See our Acceptable Use Policy and Terms of Service for more info.
You cannot use Catbox for commercial services without prior approval. Examples include as a CDN, image host for your business/ecommerce site, or a source for videos that are streamed on sites other than files.catbox.moe directly.
Should you violate any of the above banned content, your offending files will be deleted, your account (should you have one) banned, and your IP blacklisted.
But what if I really wanna upload [insert banned content]?
The file is going to be deleted, and you're going to get banned.

EDIT: I could be mistaken though, Catbox could be referring to actual real images, not drawings & paintings, sculpters, animations, etc.

Updated

Literally any of the mainstream file hosting websites is legally obligated to remove (publicly accessible) sexually explicit or abusive content, that includes Google Drive, OneDrive, & MediaFire.
Dropbox is an exception where they do not allow any "materials that are unlawfully pornographic or indecent", so it's fine to share what they define as 'lawful' porn. But good luck explaining to them what yiff is if your account gets suspended regardless.

So if you want to share NSFW content without getting flagged by trolls, either upload to Discord or just upload straight to e621 (like some artists do), and share the links from there.
Another choice would be to host your own server/website, but that one would need extra work.

Updated

steel_snake said:
EDIT: I could be mistaken though, Catbox could be referring to actual real images, not drawings & paintings, sculpters, animations, etc.

These terms on other services (eg. Patreon) tend to cover artwork as well, I'd expect the same here.

Any general file hosting service is going to have broad and vague rules to minimize liability.

data in violation of any law in any country

I'm sure if you took the laws from all countries in the world (not to mention the various laws that can't actually be enforced if taken to court but are still technically on the books), and created a single master list containing all possible violations, you couldn't upload anything without it being against something on that list.

unsuitable, offensive, obscene or discriminatory information of any kind

Entirely subjective and dependent on who's enforcing said rules. A woman's uncovered face in public is unsuitable and offensive to certain deeply religious institutions and the countries they run. Two guys holding hands is obscene to more conservative countries and groups. Who decides what counts for these, and where can users see those definitions before uploading?

That's basically what I would expect from such sites' TOSs. Terms that technically don't allow anything to be uploaded, but which are selectively enforced depending on how much they're being pressured by whoever, so as to allow the site to maintain a complacent user base. Even if there's a hole in the TOS such that something isn't not allowed, that can change the moment they get pressured enough, so at the end of the day, anything you upload anywhere can be taken down without forewarning. Best you can do is find sites that have a habit of leaving your kind of content alone, and always have backup plans.

thegreatwolfgang said:
[...]upload to Discord or just upload straight to e621[...]

(This was from the last time I heard about posting items, so it's probably outdated info) From what I remember, Discord doesn't like artwork(ie. drawings, paintings, 3D-modeling, etc.) of cub or loli stuff.

steel_snake said:
(This was from the last time I heard about posting items, so it's probably outdated info) From what I remember, Discord doesn't like artwork(ie. drawings, paintings, 3D-modeling, etc.) of cub or loli stuff.

Discord doesn't like cub/loli or bestiality, this is true.

steel_snake said:
(This was from the last time I heard about posting items, so it's probably outdated info) From what I remember, Discord doesn't like artwork(ie. drawings, paintings, 3D-modeling, etc.) of cub or loli stuff.

Send it to yourself and nobody can report it.

furrin_gok said:
Send it to yourself and nobody can report it.

That's is a good idea, though there are the file limitations of Discord(ie. file size)

steel_snake said:
That's is a good idea, though there are the file limitations of Discord(ie. file size)

Normal Discord users can upload literally an unlimited number of files as long as it stays within the 8MB size limit. Upgrade to Discord Nitro Classic and the limit increases to 50MB.
Granted Discord does not have a dedicated file management system and may change their policy in the future to delete old data, it is still a far better choice to use if you want to share NSFW artworks.

Cloud storage should only be used if you want to privately archive artworks. In that case, you just need to compress everything into a zip and lock/encrypt them, not to be shared publicly.

thegreatwolfgang said:
Normal Discord users can upload literally an unlimited number of files as long as it stays within the 8MB size limit. Upgrade to Discord Nitro Classic and the limit increases to 50MB.
Granted Discord does not have a dedicated file management system and may change their policy in the future to delete old data, it is still a far better choice to use if you want to share NSFW artworks.

Cloud storage should only be used if you want to privately archive artworks. In that case, you just need to compress everything into a zip and lock/encrypt them, not to be shared publicly.

I think the biggest issue would be with video files. Animations can regularly chomp up more than 50Mb, and some waaay more than that.

I'm trying to think of other file-holding sites that could be used safely. I think I remember one, but I forgot the name.

Frickin'-A.

magnuseffect said:
For... bestiality??
I know some people consider any anthro porn at all to count.

Yup.

I met some people who consider furry porn to be zoophilia and when i argue that it's characters standing on two legs and have human intelligence and that wanting to ban furry art is like trying to ban video games/grand theft auto cause unfounded claims that video games/grand theft auto causes violence, they just say my comparison is wrong.

Updated

faucet said:
I always thought Mega was supposed to be one of those "censorship resistant" file hosting services...

As far as I remember Its creator had left the platform a while ago and explicitly stated that the service was no longer trustworthy before he moved to nowhere.

rusitania said:
As far as I remember Its creator had left the platform a while ago and explicitly stated that the service was no longer trustworthy before he moved to nowhere.

Huh, did not know that

strikerman
his "full details, including IP address, have been provided to the authorities".

I wouldn't worry too much about that. Unless they were uploading something illegal that was never made public, there's no grounds for legal action of any kind, nor do I find it likely that Mega is filing frivolous cyber tips (the relevant orgs that manage reports, such as the NCMEC, are very strict about preventing that due to the flood of tips they receive 24/7).
Most likely that is a canned response to any content removed for being sexually explicit.

Updated

What about torrenting, of course you would need to rely on others to download stuff, but at least you wouldn't have it taken down since no one is "hosting" the file. It is not the best option, but it is at least the only way to can truly avoid censorship, as long as there are seeders.

azero said:
What about torrenting, of course you would need to rely on others to download stuff, but at least you wouldn't have it taken down since no one is "hosting" the file. It is not the best option, but it is at least the only way to can truly avoid censorship, as long as there are seeders.

What about IPFS ?

strikerman said:
It'd be oddly fear-mongering for their generic message to have a warning that the user's info was sent to authorities.

And also illegal. Police just love when you tip off the suspect. Warning them ahead of time in TOS? Sure. Giving them a heads up that they're about to be raided? No good! It's why we can assume that was F.U.D.

And yes, hashes of files or torrents (i.e. Magnet links) are perfect for avoiding censorship. In fact, they're perfect because of compact size compared to the full file and self-heal, so long as at least one person is sharing and reachable. IPFS is another solution along this thinking. There are tons of distributed file systems out there for this, but some are more usable than others. You could also just put your uncensored art collections behind I2P and/or make them go through a slow torrent if dedicated fans. (LOL)

Updated

user_19076 said:
Yup.

I met some people who consider furry porn to be zoophilia and when i argue that it's characters standing on two legs and have human intelligence and that wanting to ban furry art is like trying to ban video games/grand theft auto cause unfounded claims that video games/grand theft auto causes violence, they just say my comparison is wrong.

God, those people are such effing morons.

Also, this thread is unfortunately topical again since Mega has been going after public NSFW uploads more actively as of late.

Updated

kadachi-kun said:
God, those people are such effing morons.

Also, this thread is unfortunately topical again since Mega has been going after public NSFW uploads more actively as of late.

After all the drama with the CP Mega links shared on Twitter, I half-expected Mega to be dead and replaced by any other platform.

kadachi-kun said:
God, those people are such effing morons.

Also, this thread is unfortunately topical again since Mega has been going after public NSFW uploads more actively as of late.

They can't look inside your furry art archives if you're using some other file-based encryption instead of their proprietary thing, even with the key for the upload.

just_a_week_away~ said:
After all the drama with the CP Mega links shared on Twitter, I half-expected Mega to be dead and replaced by any other platform.

That took some insane levels of stupid to share those on a social media site. Wow, just wow.

It violates the whole 'if your files are encrypted' concept when you share them, AND they have logs. Even better, similar content is likely being accessed by same client machines, so even without keys, they can track users across platforms and accounts. Sigh... If criminals were smart, they'd become politicians or stop doing it? XD

alphamule said:
They can't look inside your furry art archives if you're using some other file-based encryption instead of their proprietary thing, even with the key for the upload.

That took some insane levels of stupid to share those on a social media site. Wow, just wow.

It violates the whole 'if your files are encrypted' concept when you share them, AND they have logs. Even better, similar content is likely being accessed by same client machines, so even without keys, they can track users across platforms and accounts. Sigh... If criminals were smart, they'd become politicians or stop doing it? XD

It's the Internet, some people had nothing to lose and sold those quite well apparently

just_a_week_away~ said:
It's the Internet, some people had nothing to lose and sold those quite well apparently

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/global-child-porn-probe-led-to-false-accusations-1.571698
This story came up as first result when trying to look up that big sting relying on credit cards from around mid 200x. They were not exactly careful or subtle. Like the article mentioned about intelligence != evidence. But imagine... many, many of them had evidence against them because they actually were guilty.

alphamule said:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/global-child-porn-probe-led-to-false-accusations-1.571698
This story came up as first result when trying to look up that big sting relying on credit cards from around mid 200x. They were not exactly careful or subtle. Like the article mentioned about intelligence != evidence. But imagine... many, many of them had evidence against them because they actually were guilty.

Right, and yet I know what I saw, my dude, and I still remember it sometimes. There was child porn, and there was child porn being sold on Twitter, as well as traded.

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