Should Mumsnet Follow X By Revealing Basic Information About Posters?

[EsmaCannonball]

I was thinking about posting this in Site Stuff but thought it would gain more responses here.

In the last few days X has introduced a feature where users can see more information about posters, namely country/region where the account was created, date of creation, type of device the account was created on, number of name changes made by account and whether the account is using a VPN. It's early days but already suspicious or bot accounts have panicked and shut down, accounts claiming to be right-wing Americans have been found to be coming from eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, journalists purporting to be Palestinians reporting from inside Gaza have accounts based in places as far away as Poland, Indonesia and Pakistan, and I am sure there are more trends being revealed.

Of course, for most of Mumsnet this would be a redundant move - we don't need to know if someone is posting from Russia or Iran on threads about Sudocrem, MasterChef or parking wars - but on those threads that do get politically charged or the forums that do attract trolls it could introduce a level of transparency while retaining the fundamentally important anonymity of posters. However, I realise it is always possible there are unintended consequences that I haven't thought through. Would it be a good move or a bad move?

The information coming from the change to X shows just how many 'grown adults' are being influenced by fake accounts and bad faith actors.

I would never report someone to Mumsnet because I thought they were dodgy. This would be about replacing personal thoughts and feelings with hard information.

I would never report someone to Mumsnet because I thought they were dodgy. This would be about replacing personal thoughts and feelings with hard information.

But it isnt "hard information" - that would be a photo ID of someone.

If two people happened to join the same day and one was a troll then the genuine person would get blamed for it too! The information you suggest is vague enough to blame people for stuff they havent actually done but not specific enough to out someone who is a troll. Its a bit like the saying "a little information is dangerous"

I would never report someone to Mumsnet because I thought they were dodgy.

Then you're part of the problem.

Putting that bit right is far easier and more sensible than the changes you're proposing.

I would hate this idea! Not because I am a troll or a bot but bc I live abroad for part of the year.

I am as British as the the day is long, my passport is British, I own property in UK, have paid taxes in UK for over thirty years, and my family are British and all live in the uk, and I listen to Radio Four for my sins. 😬

But I fear this facility would attract all of the narrow minded Brexiteer-type comments of old that we received during the referendum such as, “you don’t even live in the country. therefore you aren’t allowed to comment”.

It’s all a bit pointless anyway if people are allowed to log in with VPN’s surely?

No, I think that creates and perpetuates a snooping culture. Many women on Mumsnet are anon for a reason. X is very general use whereas Mumsnet is aimed towards a specific demographic that often asks for advise on really sensitive and complex issues. No harm in stuff like 'date joined' I guess. But as someone who once had a boyfriend who printed off pages of my posts on another forum and confronted me with the pile of paper outside work with his own readings into the most innocuous comments, no.

Yep

Glad it wasn't just me 🤣🤣

I would be deleting my account and not coming back. I have different names for different things on here and for valid reason also and would hate that my anonymity be compromised in any way.

Good luck with that

Yes it's often absolutely shite, BUT it's the way it is on the site we all choose to use.

Plus what the OP is proposing, would still result in reporting anyway.

Like Russian bots cant be posting from the uk

I think that your country of origin as a poster would be useful. Just to follow some of the rambling and confused posts that often don't seem to make sense. People who run off at the mouth.

I also think that the massive majority of posts cover the same stuff So it would be difficult to pin down an individual to be the actual poster and where they lived.

I thought this what Facebook was for.

But there are often cultural and national differences which need to be treated to be protected to ensure anonymity.

Thoughts from a UK Poster

Lol well you only posted 2 sentences so thought the slight change of username was relevant and deliberate or else you would have used different words.

I think they should have the country and century they’re posting from

This would cause safety issues for women experiencing abuse and effectively stop them from seeking advice. It's a hard no from me.

I don’t see how revealing country of origin would damage anonymity. There’s 70 million of us in the country after all.

My concern is only about the possibility of more identifying locations being accidentally released, or hacked more easily.

I don't understand why the fact that something has value on X is regarded as strong evidence that it would be helpful on MN.

X is so different from MN. The most important difference, I imagine, is that the flow of content on X is very heavily influenced by algorithms, which give a lot more power to bad actors seeking to manipulate what we see. Additionally, because MN is an old-style forum, we are all seated around a relatively small number of threads, where discussion takes place in a relatively integrated way. For each thread, there are a number of people all looking at the same thing which gives much more scope for ordinary human scrutiny to identify possible issues and report them. On X and similar platforms there is a blizzard of atomised tweets and replies, and everyone sees a different subset of all of these fragments.

Plus, X is astronomically vaster. MN is small enough that if you hit report, you quickly find yourself in a dialogue with a real actual human mod who can read your report and respond to it in a matter of minutes or hours.

Everything is different, so there are no grounds for defaulting to the view that what is helpful on one will be helpful on the other.

I'm sorry but that line about sudocrem masterchef or parking wars made me chuckle for ages 😆 🤣 😂
@EsmaCannonball

If this came in I could open a new account and put this account login up for sale. Assuming there’s a Russian bot who wants to pose as a knackered mum of three 😂😂😂

I think this a rubbish idea and many mumsnetters post because they are anonymous, why do you want to try and compromise that?

The general consensus to your suggestion OP, is a big fat NO.

Oh clever... 🤣

I agree.

X is clamping down because the sheer quantity of bots is causing the usefulness of the site to deteriorate and more influential real life individual users are checking out.

The bots on this site are annoying but easier to deal with on the scale that Mumsnet operates at.