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.
Honestly I think the easiest thing would be to not allow images or embedding at all in PMs and perhaps display a warning message when clicking links "you are leaving [instance name]..."
Analyzing potentially lots of text and images in an effort to "guarantee" safety of users is likely a sisyphusian endeavour that is bound to fail - and furthermore also has privacy issues (namely that "private" messages aren't private at all)
https://lemmy.world/post/28077771/16380860
For anyone not clicking the link, but wondering what this reply means... it's a link to the user's comment (right below, within this comment chain) about a lemmy update
I was confused for a sec and probably would've skipped over all of the context because I didn't continue reading first (and I hesitate to click links randomly), so maybe someone else with no attention span will benefit as well
"Lemmy update v0.19.11 provides 'Dont render images in private message'
Not every instance is updated to this version, but it should stop the current method of spam (if updated). I'm wordy, I know; but maybe it'll help someone