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.

  • Elaine Cortez@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    28 days ago

    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 this person based on IP/browser or via automated systems?

    • MrKaplan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      28 days ago

      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.

  • arotrios@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    28 days ago

    I’m almost 100% certain Nicole is the first sentient AI and is looking for friends in the only way it knows how.

    • sploosh@lemmy.world
      0·
      28 days ago

      I’m just guessing here, but maybe a rejected suitor? Or a person they’re beefing with? A mentally ill person who found these pictures and decided to direct their hate at them? People do all sorts of weird stuff for all sorts of weird reasons.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      28 days ago

      My hypothesis is, someone’s trying to run a “Hey statistically lonely men on the internet, I’m allegedly a girl. Send me money in hopes of getting attention” scam, and they’re using the pictures of “Nicole” because that’s what they have at hand. I’m picturing a college classmate capturing college Zoom classes so they have several different pictures of the same girl. What others are attributing to sick malice I’m attributing to callous disregard.

    • kamenLady.@lemmy.world
      0·
      25 days ago

      The same kind, that sends parents pictures of the corpse of their daughter in the car accident that killed her.

      They somehow got the pictures the police took on the accident site

      They kept sending these pictures to the parents, until they moved & changed their names.

  • Mpatch@lemmy.world
    0·
    29 days ago

    I gotta give it to you guys. The foresight to prevent a disaster is 10/10. Top tier. Well done.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
        0·
        29 days ago

        I saw a theory a while back that the IPs which receive the various images get logged allowing the recipients accounts to be tied to an IP and possibly even a physical address based on the timeframe it was sent. Is that a real concern or just conspiracy, do you think?

        • Ricky Rigatoni@lemm.ee
          0·
          28 days ago

          I find it difficult to believe there are enough fediverse users not using a VPN at all times to make that effort worthwhile.

        • MrKaplan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          29 days ago

          That appears to be a baseless conspiracy theory.

          Except for the gore pms, I believe all the images have been uploaded to Lemmy instances or Imgur, which means that the uploader has no way to track IPs accessing those images. The gore images were uploaded to another service that at least on the surface appears to be another regular image hoster that wouldn’t expose IP access logs to uploaders.

          • Aphelion@lemm.ee
            0·
            29 days ago

            I don’t think its baseless given that anyone can set up their own Lemmy instance to host the PM’d images.

            • MrKaplan@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              29 days ago

              The instance domains I’ve seen involved so far at least weren’t set up specifically for this purpose at least. Most of the URLs were pointing to established services and not different per recipient.

              While I can’t rule out that individual users may have received a different URL in an attempt to extract their IP and information about their browser, this at least does not appear to have been done in a larger scale.

              • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                0·
                28 days ago

                A day or two ago, someone spammed out a picture of a murdered body with the standard Fediverse Chick copypasta. That seemed to freak people out; the nicoled community locked down, this thread happened, etc.

                The gore photo seems to be a second actor/copycat. The Nicole spammer either came from their own instances or opened accounts very shortly before spamming, the gore photo, and a following anime style picture done in red-on-white saying “Do you like insanity?” seem to come from accounts that were made 2 years ago.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      It’s pretty obvious …

      What’s scary is how many people just accepted that some woman wanted to randomly spam thousands of pictures with her smoking weed.

  • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world
    0·
    28 days ago

    Damn, I never thought about it this way. Wow. I always took it as a funny thing not thinking of the person in the photo being an actual person who could very well be harassed. Thank you for bringing this to light. Whoever thought of this is a good human being. <3

  • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
    0·
    27 days ago

    So you have all the limitless time and energy to address this stupid spam post but you can’t prevent the rise of authoritarian bots and powermods on lemmy.world?

    • Foofighter@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      27 days ago

      I guess limitless time and energy would be needed to identify authoritarian bots because it’s much harder compared to identifying a person in an image. Should nothing be done because the larger problem can’t be solved at the current time?

        • Foofighter@discuss.tchncs.de
          0·
          26 days ago

          First: you people? Who are “we”, are unable to identify such contents / opinions? Second: I’m not talking about people identifying content and filtering it, I am talking about automated systems. Do you think that they are filtering Nicole’s by looking at each and every picture?

          • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
            0·
            26 days ago

            ‘You’ are everyone in existence not me who apparently have a hard time distinguishing authoritarian jargon.

            I’m not sure where opinions come into this, are you a bot?

            If I can do it, an automated system can do it. Twitter already had it but they didn’t roll it out because it ‘false flagged’ a bunch of repugnican politicians as fascist back in 2015 GUESS WHAT THEY WERE FUCKING ON THE MONEY!

            I get it, you’re a terminally online shitstirrer that isn’t getting enough attention. Well I can guarantee this is the last post you’ll be getting any of that from me.

            • Grimy@lemmy.world
              0·
              26 days ago

              you’re a terminally online shitstirrer that isn’t getting enough attention

              I’m seriously impressed you are accusing the other person of doing this. Reread your comments and take a hard look at the vibe you are giving off.

            • Foofighter@discuss.tchncs.de
              0·
              26 days ago

              You are absolutely incapable of judging the complexity of the tasks at hand. a) Calculating a hash of every uploaded image, comparing it against a blocklist, and extending the blocklist as needed b) validating each each post to distinguish truth from lie, facts from imagination and on top of that judging whether the presentation opinion fits in a moral/ethical framework of which a computer has no concept of.

              A computer is a machine that calculates stuff. It “emulates a brain” to appear smart. A brain is a biological machine that is good in pattern detection and expression, which emulates a computer to do math to appear smart.

              If you think an automated system can do it because you can do it, please spend your apparent infinit resources and time in implementing it rather than wasting your valuable time online insulting others who actually do something.

    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
      0·
      28 days ago

      TLDR; Scammer/creep is using a woman’s photos, possibly stolen from a webcam hack, and her social media links to privately message people.

      People were getting private messages with a few links and a picture from someone claiming to be Nicole the Fediverse Chick.

      Of course this becomes a meme and spreads as people talk about it.

      It gets weird because there’s multiple different pictures. 1 or 2 stolen pic online, that’s expected for these types of scam. But there’s a whole collection of them out there. Its suspected to be pulled from a live stream or a hacked webcam.

      Like usual, the chance that the woman in the picture is actually Nicole sending messages is pretty low. Having her image and links shared to randos online makes an easy target for a lot of people to harass her.

      .world admins are saying no more. All references to “Nicole” will be purged.

    • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
      0·
      28 days ago

      For a long time someone has been spamming Lemmy users with a private message including a picture introducing herself as the “fediverse chick” and plugging socials

      But what if that’s not the person at all