Content only gets stored on your local server if a local user downloads it by viewing it before the message or the original content gets deleted. Separately, you can block abusive servers manually if needed (e.g. https://element-hq.github.io/synapse/latest/usage/configurat...).
For instance, this is better than email, where if someone sends you email with abusive attachments, it'll end up hitting your mail spool and likely your imap server whatever.
That said, agreed that moderation and anti-abuse tooling is fragmented currently, and we're working away on improving it. Recently a lot of time got taken on authenticated media (to make it much harder to distribute abusive content): https://matrix.org/blog/2024/06/26/sunsetting-unauthenticate... but the top priority for The Matrix.org Foundation is to improve the anti-abuse situation (by securing funding for more folks to work on it).
Earlier I was writing about how its an issue in federated system , but now I have come to realisation that this is an issue in any encrypted system (even discord can have csam but it can detect it)
and to be honest , thus becomes a compromise , encrypted but you have the risk of csam or unencrypted , but to be really honest , I think considering edward's snowden blow on the nsa , I think I am much more safer in the encrypted land
here was my original post which I was writing
csam is an issue in federated systems (whether its p2p or non p2p) (source I read once on HN that some friend had created in the 1990's a sort of thing similar to chitchatter.im , only to it spread out of word and then came the csam)
I realize you're probably using this discussion about the Synapse Admins chat as a springboard to talk about encryption in general, but for anybody unfamiliar with Matrix rooms: encryption is optional, and wasn't a factor in the issue.
The Synapse Admins channel discussed by GP and GGP is not encrypted at all, and its messages are publicly accessible to anyone[1]. This means that various detection scripts could be run on messages at any time by the server, including when receiving them, and before propagating them to their database.
yes encryption is optional , and its generally not recommended in big groups but for me and my friend in a very basic group , encryption was causing problem in matrix and basically no problem in signal
for some people , encryption is a must because you never know what the govt. thinks is right or wrong and simply giving the govt. power to surveillance is quite powerful to govt. because then they can tweak that info into metaphorically speaking whatever they like.
there are entire communities based on this idea
For example r/privacy , https://discuss.privacyguides.net/ on which you rather have discussion on which protocol is more "encrypted" and "decentralized" in some sense to the extreme (like recent was simplex vs cwtch )
Because of that I still idle in the synapse admins channel, though I have it muted and haven't opened it for years.
It makes me worry that csam from the muted channel could be sitting on my hard drive somewhere.