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CSAM and piracy aren't the worst of examples on a site like 4chan. People... like clinically insane people just keeps scriptbombing someone's private addresses and bomb threats and other schizophrenic copypastas(not regular ones like Blackbird speed checks or "Glasses are versatile", but more like cognitohazards) as well as there will be viagra/cialis/poker/prostitution/roblox spams. I think those in that order should be the primary concern for keeping BBS running because those chase normal people away.

For the two categories mentioned above that are plainly illegal, I think, ironically, you can probably just keep AI classifiers running and wait for calls from NCMEC or DMCA emails, exploiting safe harbor clauses and/or by pointing at reasonable measures you've taken. If you have a large post volumes and short public log retention(private logs will probably have to be kept), that would help keeping the pressure low for those.

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Deciding what is spam and blocking it is moderation or "censorship".

If 4chan didnt have spam filters, the users would be begging for it almost immediately because the website would become unusable.

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We might be talking past each other a bit. I agree that without any sort of spam filter a comment site would become unusable.

What I was trying to point out is that there are a lot of users of these 'edgy' sites that would like to post content that the site owners don't want them posting. So the site owner censors and removes CSAM and piracy so that the site isn't immediately in a legal black hole. The site owners remove content that at least some of the users would want be a use they find it morally or legally objectionable. Spam is kinda orthogonal to that point, since neither the site owner or the users want to see it.

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What you said about spam is exactly what I'm trying to point out.

There are forms of moderation that we often dont even think of as moderation or 'censorship' because its removing content that "nobody" wants to see. One may argue that the spammers are users of the site who are being censored.

Also, this is a side note, but I'd assume that the overwhelming majority of even 4chan users are in favour of CSAM being banned from the site, even if there are some users who want to see it (i could be wrong about that, it's not like i even have anecdotes to back that up)

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