Skip Navigation
Lemmy.World Announcements @lemmy.world
lwadmin @lemmy.world

Ban of "Nicole" images and potential doxing

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.

285 comments

  • What of the recent NSFW/gore images that were shared? Has that been reported to authorities?

    Not expecting police to solve it, but at least it would be on their radar.

    • we looked into it, we currently believe that to be a copycat not related to the other pms.

      the lemmy.world account involved in that was most certainly compromised from an unrelated data breach and all connections originated from IPs linked to an anonymization service, so there's also not much to follow up on.

      we will reconsider this if it happens again.

  • Glad to see there's effort being taken to stop this, as someone who's been harassed in a similar way on here it really kind of bugs me that people are making light of this or assume that the original person is the one doing this. Impersonation is frighteningly easy on the Fediverse and I really wish they'd add some kind of verification in Lemmy like they do in Mastodon to try and minimize the impact of it.

  • To clarify for others, as I have no interest in doing this myself, but if people feel like sharing, are they allowed to do so provided they censor the pictire/remove it entirely from a screenshot? Not sure why someone would, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask.

  • Thankfully I haven't received one of the gore ones I've seen people talking about, but yeah I'll stop participating in the meme, it's not as a fun anymore.

  • Echoing everyone else in that it seemed kind of funny at first but that it has just turned weirder.

    I think it's a good call. I will report if I receive any messages.

  • The real fediverse chick was that newly hatched chicken someone posted pics of.

    Often imitated, never duplicated.

  • Was just about to delete the comment that had screenshots in it but I see that was already removed (I've also deleted it off of my profile too, and deleted comments that contain links to threads which include the photos). I'm not entirely well versed on the Lemmy software, but is there any way for the Fediverse to block or potentially identify the person behind the "Nicole" accounts via IP/browser/automated systems or something?

    • unless you operate the instance that is being used to send this material you can generally only work with the content that is being posted/sent in PMs. almost all identifying information is stripped when it leaves your local instance to be federated to other instances. even if there was a group of instances collaborating on e.g. a shared blocklist, abusers would just switch to other instances that aren't part of the blocking network. there's a reason why it's not recommended to run a lemmy instance with open signups if you don't have additional anti-spam measures and a decently active admin team. smaller instances tend to have fewer prevention measures in place, which results in a burden for everyone else in the fediverse that is on the receiving end of such content. unfortunately this is not an easy task to solve without giving up (open) federation.

285 comments