Warning about posting in the Relationships Topic on Mumsnet

[bibbitybobbityyhat]

Don't do it if you don't want your personal stories lifted and splashed all over the Mail Online.

The DM used to restrict themselves to copying and pasting mainly made up (Penis Beaker), lighthearted or neutral threads.

But now they are quite happy to publish deeply personal and very identifying threads too from people posting at crisis point.

I do actually foresee Mumsnet's inability to prevent this being the end of the website tbh. Or MN as we know and love it, anyway.

I know we've had a zillion threads about this already, but I just want to remind people again:

Don't post on Mumsnet if you don't want your thread to be reproduced in the Mail Online.

Also, mumsnetters are very selective in terms of outrage, and quite happy to share someone's sensitive situation when it suits them.

Remember riven? She posted that she was considering putting her severely disabled DD in care because of lack of support. MN'ers were quick enough to share her thread on social media then, alert any journalists they could find to pick up the story, and positively rejoiced at the fact the story became viral and was picked up by ITV and the tabloids.

Where was her safe space to post then? Oh, wait, this plight needed sharing, news crews on her doorstep were seemingly inconsequential because this was "mumsnet at its best." never mind that Riven actually left the site after that eh.

And the troll hunting gets worse when there is a sudden influx of new users Bibbity, so combined with name changing it's all a bit of a viscous downward spiral

Has the lifted thread been zapped? I can't find it.

I'm astounded that people still don't know leftover rice is a major cause of food poisoning, I've known that to be the case for at least 20 years! How can other people not know? Well it's because they just haven't been aware of that information before. I suppose they are thick?

The hoo-ha over Facebook was quite different Wannabe. Posters did not understand that when they clicked to link to Facebook only they were being taken direct to their FB page, and that if another poster clicked to link they would be taken to their FB and so on. It appeared for a while to be a direct link between a MN user and their real life name and FB page. It was soon cleared up.

Again, WannaBe - the situation is that some people posting on this topic a) don't know and b) would care if they did know, that their threads/posts may appear in the DM. You seem to be saying "but they should know, and they shouldn't care." Okay, but meanwhile: some people don't know, and do care. Complaining that this shouldn't be the case doesn't change the fact that it is the case.

The OP suggested a warning (alongside the other kinds of warnings MN already gives) so that those people are informed.

Livia you asked why people care.
That's one reason people might care. People who are not you, who have a different set of preferences and boundaries and whatever else than you, might be ok with something appearing on MN but not in the DM.

There are all sorts of things people care about that I don't care about. I am much less bothered about being "outed" than lots of MNers. And yet, I can accept that people have different feelings about Internet anonymity than I do - it's really not that hard...

And still people don't get the fact that they have no control over who reads their posts on MN, let alone anywhere else.

Someone can be reading many a thread for nefarious purposes, they may be laughing at this poster, being turned on, whatever - why is that better than some person reading it on the DM site?

I'm not saying they shouldnt care - I'm saying why care about it being on the DM when anyone can read it on here anyway? What's the difference? Do you think everyone who reads posts on here does so with sympathy? Of course they don't.

Obviously feel free to patronise me

Because people posting on MN for support are making a trade-off, between the good (get support) and the bad (which for them might include, mean people reading the thread and giggling about them or whatever). If their thread appears on the DM instead, they get all the mean people and none of the support.

You don't see a difference. Other people, who are not you and who have different preferences, views and comfort levels to you, might see a difference. That doesn't make them thick people who should get off the internet, it just means they care about things you don't care about.

Again, the OP suggested a warning to give people a heads-up. MN already do this on some forums for some things (trolls, posters not being medically qualified professionals, etc). I don't get why the loudest advocates of "people on MN should already know this!" think it's a bad idea to actually tell them.

MN was always a public forum, even though it often felt like we were talking to a group of mates. I think the difference back in 2007 when I registered was that the rest of the world didn't seem to be that interested in what a bunch of funny, clever women had to say or what their relationship problems were. Now the despicable Mail and their ilk are mining us for clicks, I can't see how the site is not going to change as long-term users and newbies start to realise their lives are being used, not as they always have been, for their own information and support and the information and support of others, mostly women, but for the entertainment of a bunch of people who are not part of this community. I think it is tragic, but inevitable.

MN is no less identifiable than the Daily Mail. People like to claim that it is but it isn't. There are over a million hits a day on here iirc, this is the biggest parenting site in the country. And the chances are that more people read a thread on here than read one on the Daily mail site.

Maybe that's true, Wannabe - but are the readers on here different from those who read the DM? That is, I think that a relationship problem that I post on here is more likely to be read by sympathetic women, in the main - rather than misogynistic twats a more general audience. The people involved in my problem might read Mumsnet but are more likely to spot any more outing details on a more general interest website. I know it wasn't a Relationships thread but the bride/MIL/honeymoon one has appeared on the Mail, Sun, Mirror and HuffPost sites. That has surely got to be a larger and thus more outing audience.

I for one would appreciate a reminder being posted at the top of threads. Yes, we should remember it is a public forum but who thinks about that in the middle of the crisis? That it will stop people posting who would have had life-changing help makes me very sad indeed.

they get all of the mean people and no support

Ah okay I get it now, they don't want opinions, just sympathetic people to say they are right and they should LTB or whatever.

You can't post something without risking that not everyone is going to be supportive. And if you do, you can't whine about it afterwards

but of course people will continue to bleat, and PM each other and campaign for warnings and fuck all will actually change!

When you speak, you choose your audience - and you will probably decide to choose one that is more sympathetic or less judgmental or which will give you good advice.

Previously, posting on MN has been a way of choosing your sympathetic audience. Obviously, anyone could come across your post, and MN posters have never been backward in letting you know what they really think, so it's not like you were guaranteed privacy or an easy ride - no one thought that, or if they did, they were soon disabused of that idea. But the reality was that you often got great advice and there was a relatively low risk of being outed. I think this has now changed, and therefore it is worth putting a warning on threads.

Ah okay I get it now, they don't want opinions, just sympathetic people to say they are right and they should LTB or whatever.

That isn't even remotely what I said.

Again: you're on the Relationships board. People frequently post on here about sensitive, painful situations they're in. This isn't the time or the place to complain that those people are thick or whiny or bleating, just because you struggle to understand that not everyone in the entire world shares your feelings about internet privacy. Or at least, when this subject comes up in the Bereavement forum - because trust me, it will - at least maybe think carefully about what you're saying there before wading in with faces to tell everyone how ridiculous they're being.

Yeah okay - because I'm really going to do that

Well, you were happy enough to do it here.

Lady My point is that you don't know your audience on here - it could be anyone reading your posts. People aren't necessarily who they purport to be.

People need to stop treating a public site like a private safe space.

But of course they won't so threads like this will become more and more frequent.

Perhaps MN should set up a separate topic for it

Yes because RL and Bereavement are the same aren't they?

All a warning would do is to remind posters, or alert them to the fact if they didn't know it, that anything they post might end up in the national press.

I'm really not understanding why anyone would object strongly to that.

I quite understand that MN is a business, but even businesses have a duty of care towards their customers to warn them of possible foreseeable harm

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_care_in_English_law

I do not think most posters would make a connection between mumsnet owning everything I post, and papers being able to lift posts word for word. In fact the idea that mumsnet owns the posts seems to make it safer. They obviously don't own posts in any meaningful way or the papers would need to ask their permission.

When people post on MN they do so within a certain set of boundaries, that if someone makes a nasty personal comment on their thread for example, it can be reported and deleted.
On the Daily Mail website this doesn't apply to the misogynists and nasty trolls people who post in the comments.

Also, when people post on MN they know their post is not going to be 'dramatised' for example with MN adding photos of a warring couple So there is a difference

I said that - none of us have EVER known our audience on here. It's a public form! We know that!

But previously MN was smaller and less known, and your threads were not given a wider audience by being posted in the DM, so it was more likely that your audience would be sympathetic. Posters played the odds that they wouldn't be outed. The odds have now shifted against us, so a warning is a good idea.

I'm thinking of pm-ing something like this

"Sorry for the intrusion but I just wanted to say that the Mail Online and other newspapers are now quite happy to lift entire threads like yours, even sensitive ones concerning identifiable relationship problems and bereavement, and publish them on their websites where comments are invited. You may well be fully aware of this already and not mind about it, in which case apologies for being presumptious."

What do those of you who think people deserve a reminder think of that wording?

But on MN nasty posts can come as a sudden shock.

On the DM at least you can check only the best rated. They tend to be nice or at least fair. The worst rated can be avoided.