FFS Mumsnet HQ - illegal images on threads

[Lagirl20]

Beware, the thread “weird message from friend” has some child abuse images on it!!! @mumsnet

It's honestly like some of you think Mumsnet is your friend. Would you defend Amazon or Facebook or X if they failed to put any barriers in place to prevent CSA images appearing? Would you accept "we're sorry FOR those affected?" I think not!

How many persons are employed my mumsnet?

Same. I thought HQ had been shocked into action after last time, it is beyond disapppointing to hear that it happened again 😡😡😡.

I'm surprised they are still "business as usual" today tbh - isn't there some sort of watch dog that can force the closure of sites that host CSA images?

Users have every right to expect that every effort is being made to make their use of a site /app as safe as possible. Clearly this isn't the case here with mn. They are trying to do it on the cheap and Hope who ever is doing this won't Try other avenues to upload this images. Mn need to start taking it seriously

Just ban the uploading of photos MN.
To expose your users to this is negligent.

They didn't promise that. They mentioned support for the Night watchers. There's no reason why counselling should be offered to everyone who came across the images.

How the fuck has this happened again? This is beyond negligent.

That's out of order too.

Sites are legally obliged to protect their users from harmful content in accordance with the online safety act.

That doesn’t mean that the authorities shouldn’t be aiming to bring down whoever is responsible, but there are a huge amount of variables there, and so while they attempt to do just that, it is the owner of the site they are targeting’s responsibility to ensure that the images are not able to be posted to their site.

In terms of who is responsible, they could be anywhere. They may not even be in the UK, and wherever they are they will definitely be posting behind a vpn or proxy, so it’s not as simple as just going out and catching them, whereas it is that simple to prevent images being uploaded to your site, by purely stopping image uploads.

I don't want image posting to be disabled. However I don't think images should be posted if they're not assessed by a human moderator. It would also seem wise to have image posting privileges confined to posters whose identity has been verified by MNHQ.

knowing that mumsnet is being targeted like this, why should a human moderator be expected to run the risk of coming across these images?

just turn images off permanently

Yes they are deleted before 8am, even if they aren't deleted in the middle of the night. Someone I reported very early in the morning was deleted and banned the other day and the action and my reply from the moderators was well before 8am.

Mumsnet have heavily supported the Online Safety Bill, which imposes a duty on sites to protect their users from things such as this.

Which is quite ironic, really.

It's almost unbelievable that no one twigged that allowing links was the same as allowing photos

Surely they can just suspend image posting at certain times. Or have a manual approval process for approving images. I know MN likes to pretend it’s skint but the fact IIOC have been posted late at night a few days now and they’ve done nothing proactive to stop it is pretty horrific

So did I - or at least that they were "screening" them before they appeared here

Then again there have been many questions asked, and though HQ assured uss they'd "get to them" there's been very little said since, so who knows?

As I said, I don't want image posting to be disabled. I want it to be dealt with. Perhaps it should only be available to verified members. I certainly think accessing the site via a vpn should be stopped.

I think people do need to try really hard to actually understand what’s happened here rather than just go on and on about turning images off and image detection failures. As per Becky’s post it’s not an issue of image uploads. This happened this time because the attackers posted links. So it’s not the same thing happening again, it’s a different mode of attack. This is a coordinated attack on Mumsnet - probably because it’s a site for women - and you’re absolutely playing into the attackers’ hands by not understanding it.

That hasn't been my experience @ilovesooty

That’s why I don’t click on uploaded links that people post on threads. 99% will be genuine, but there’s a risk of it being a virus or worse, what’s happened in this situation.

If someone starts a thread saying “Why isn’t my hosue selling” and posts a link then if there is a page of replies offering advice I’d assume the link was genuine and I’d likely have a look but that’s about it. People are absolutely vile and it’s a sorry state of affairs we live in such a sickening world

The issue is that the function used to post these pictures is incredibly basic and should have been considered by whoever set up this snazzy new system. It was not a hi tech attack - it really shows up negligence on MN behalf to consider how an image could appear on their site and shut it down from all angles. Treating it like a game of whack a mole and addressing the issues as they come up simply isn’t good enough. I think it’s you that doesn’t understand what the legal implications are here for anyone who
might inadvertently view or share these images. On the last incident people were being advised to share links

What, AGAIN?! 😡 This happened the other week as well, thought it had all been sorted!
They need to take away the uploading photos option, not just temporarily disable like last time.

I work on software. As part of my job you need to consider every type of issues that the customer might experience and try to put blockers for them not to happen. So no, mn should have considered every type of scenario and block them. When developing/ designing websites you put yourself in the worse scenarios and try and prevent them. You don’t prevent them once they have happened

I had been looking out for a thread/message from them about the action they were taking. Stuff like this really should be pinned at the top of active for a few days or something

Good luck with that, @Butterflyfern
I don't imagine HQ are keen to advertise what's happened, and am only wondering how long it'll be until this thread is closed so all questions can be answered on the less visited Site Stuff - except as said above they probably won't be answered at all

FWIW I do appreciate it's better to prioritise dealing with the problem and addressing questions only when they've been thought through, but it's been over a week now and surely that's time enough - especially when it's clear this is still happening and will doubtless happen again

MN is an anonymous site. It wouldn’t be reasonable to expect people to give MN HQ their ID in order to be able to upload images of the cat.

Also it’s not reasonable to expect anyone to be exposed to CSA images, even for the purpose of moderation. People who have to view those kinds of images as part of their job are given special training and access to support to help them deal with what they have to see.

Viewing CSA images shouldn’t ever be within the job description of a chat forum moderator and I don’t imagine MNHQ would want that

It’s very easy for posters to sit here and demand that MNHQ do things the way they feel they should be done, i.e. to have images assessed by a human first, but from MN POV the most important thing is that the images not be able to be posted there in the first place, and the easiest way to achieve that is to cease image uploads.