this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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[Important] Catbox Needs Your Help (blog.catbox.moe)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/technology@lemmy.world
39 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

tl;dr - Patreon deleted my page, refused to elaborate, and Catbox is now short $1,300~ in reoccurring income to pay the bill. Support Catbox Here

I use catbox to post videos and moving webp files to lemmy 😭

edit: to be clear I'm not affiliated with catbox, i just shared

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[–] hisao@ani.social 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

With CSAM, you want to block uploading and downloading, because both are problematic for a host.

At that point, if such content is already posted there and available for download, it doesn't matter if it is only allowed to be downloaded via clearnet or VPNs as well. Blocking VPNs doesn't make any difference here.

I’m 99% sure it doesn’t work that way. The Lemmy instance caches a preview image for posted links. But scrolling past without clicking a link will not expose your IP to Catbox unless you have an auto-preview setting enabled that opens/caches every link you scroll past automatically, which I don’t believe is enabled by default.

I've seen a debate regarding lemmynsfw with some people asking to turn off caching/proxying for images. I don't know what's their current status on this, but on my instance even thumbnails were not visible for catbox images. I'm not sure if it's disabled or it's the instance server itself having trouble accessing catbox.

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

At that point, if such content is already posted there and available for download, it doesn't matter if it is only allowed to be downloaded via clearnet or VPNs as well. Blocking VPNs doesn't make any difference here.

My understanding is that it's for tracking/reporting purposes, and to mitigate future offenses by banning those IPs. You can report an IP to an ISP for CSAM violations, but it's not as useful when the user's on a VPN.

I've seen a debate regarding lemmynsfw with some people asking to turn off caching/proxying for images. I don't know what's their current status on this, but on my instance even thumbnails were not visible for catbox images. I'm not sure if it's disabled or it's the instance server itself having trouble accessing catbox.

Yeah, I've also noticed that Catbox links don't seem to generate previews on Mbin, as well, so I suspect that may be a Catbox block of some sort. That's interesting... I wonder if that causes a Lemmy instance to attempt a live preview instead of giving you a cached one. If so, that seems like something that probably shouldn't be in place, IMO.

[–] hisao@ani.social 2 points 1 day ago

My understanding is that it’s for tracking/reporting purposes, and to mitigate future offenses by banning those IPs. You can report an IP to an ISP for CSAM violations, but it’s not as useful when the user’s on a VPN.

Don't think even the most extreme actors go that far, link could be opened accidentally, etc...

Anyway, from what another poster here linked, it looks like Catbox might actually not be banning any VPNs at all on its own, this might be some kind of middleware/routing infrastructure issue.