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.

I think it's a real shame that we should be encouraged by mnhq to change our user names regularly.

I like the idea that if I recognise a posters name I know what I'm going to get. Good quality relationship advice. Style advice and so on.

I would have thought mnhq would have liked to encourage a layer of regular, dependable posters that has helped their site grow.

Otherwise each time we post we might as well just be given a new code. No one will recognise anyone then and it will all just collapse in one messy heap.

Well, it would be a perfect way to bring down the reputation of a site such as mn wouldn't it? So, a "journalist" posts an emotive thread which is bound to garner sympathy/responses and people respond. Then, a couple of days later the thread appears on the DM website, where the same responders are avid readers. And they come back here and start wailing about how MN is no longer a "safe" space to post and how posters shouldn't share their personal stories here any more. DM 1, mn wailers 0.

If anything is going to bring down the reputation of the site it's the number of "daily mail journo's are bastards" posts from people who clearly spend as much time trawling the daily mail for things to be outraged at as they do claiming that MN is a safe space to seek support in your most desperate moments. If people just stopped wining about the daily mail lifting MN threads, and more to the point stopped reading the daily mail, then this would all die down in a couple of months and it would no longer matter.

Oh and there's every chance that the threads being lifted are posted as bate by journo's looking for something to lift and publish

I suspect there's a fair amount of this going on.

The fact that they feel the need to post on the begging threads is silly anyway - we are all intelligent adults, if people are naive enough to believe that everyone is legit, and that an open forum is safe, warnings are fairly pointless

Wannabe You summed it up far nor succinctly and articulately than I could - couldn't agree more!

*more not nor

I googled Daily Mail and MN together to see what DM had been publishing from here. First couple of results are MN Relationships threads directly lifted from MN with the usual shit Daily Mail narrative imposed over it, up on DM site.
Next up are the many threads from MNers saying how hateful the Daily Mail are.
So I'm coming on now to add my own personal fuck you! to the Daily Mail, which is a vampiric, hateful shower of shit.

I hadn't realised the DM has started lifting from the Relationships board: I'd mostly only ever heard of funny threads or AIBU being used.

So thanks for the heads, up, bibbety.

I do accept the point that some threads might be started by journalists but HQ seem to know their stuff when it comes to IP addresses and all that, so they'd sniff them out, surely? Anyway, even if that is happening, we have no idea of the proportion of real threads that are being used and probably better to err on the side of caution.

In some ways it is a useful cautionary tale. I almost posted something very personal over Christmas that my lunatic mother did to me. I was so devastated and desperate for advice I almost posted a full rundown on the whole incident. It would have outed me in seconds flat and no doubt caused me further upset. What stopped me was seeing the latest Daily mail direct lift from a thread. It reminded me that when I type into this little box, i'm not just talking to the little people that live in my computer, but I am actually exposing my personal life/feelings/situation to random strangers. It's a shame though, because I could have really done with a bit of hand holding and I don't have anyone in real life to talk to. So I will keep it to myself, which seems safer.

People need to stop treating the internet as a 'safe space' - it isn't...

That is very true and it is exactly why MNHQ SHOULD put a warning at the top of the Relationship board. MN used to "feel" like a parenting site where we could share identifying things and not worry about it appearing in a national newspaper.

So I like threads like this, people need to be reminded- frequently that it is not a "safe" place.

I'm surprised that people need to keep being reminded - there is a thread like this every week!

And it's not just the DM that does it now.

I am wondering how it is that so many people profess to hate the Mail and yet know that threads have been lifted...

If people are too thick naive to realise that it is a public space then they should perhaps reconsider using the internet at all

MN has always been a public space, but it is relatively recently that whole OP has been printed in newspapers. And as I said, I've never heard of anything from the Relationship's board being lifted, only really AIBU which I don't go on much anyway.

I genuinely don't read the DM and I'm sure plenty of others don't, so we only see what's been lifted when there is a thread about it on here, and I haven't been around for a few weeks so I missed all this about the thread in question.

It used to be that the papers lifted from aibu (frothing berserkers) and _chat (funny stuff) but this recent move to harvest from other topics is concerning.

Posting warnings is a huge waste of time!
People do not listen or care!

Last week a poster opened a thread asking others to talk about a highly emotive and personal subject. That ONE post with no further explanation garnered pages and pages of responses. I posted a warning, did anyone care? No! Reports where ignored.
I sat back and watched as poster after poster told all.
Some people have no wit and that op is still around starting threads.
I do think it is wrong for threads to end up in papers etc but MNHQ have responded to this before and are not prepared to change.

I think Wannabe has summed the situation up perfectly

If you are coming onto a site like this, you run the risk of posts being lifted. It's common sense. Nothing unless it is a locked or paid site is private. I don't think it should stop people from posting. What I do think though, is that it is very easy to change some details in an OP to make yourself less identifying?

The advice given on here is great most of the time and if you are someone who needs advice, just be careful in your OP. Don't let the DM and so on stop you getting well needed advice if you have no one to talk to in RL

PS not everyone reads the DM, so it's not like its being put in your local paper where it would be even more identifying

I think we should be shocked that Britains biggest selling national newspaper trawls the relationship section of a website where women are confiding and assisting each other and publishes their stories.

That IS shocking and it is grim however hardened you are to the idea that nothing is safe on the internet and that the majority of journalists are just a bunch of grubby muck-raking shites.

I agree there should be a reminder in relationships. It is a shame for all of us but what can you do?!

I am wondering how it is that so many people profess to hate the Mail and yet know that threads have been lifted...

Because other people post about it on here? I know it's hard to believe, but there genuinely are people who say they don't read the Mail and actually... don't read the Mail. (Also, what's with all the faces, Livia? You sound positively gleeful about the idea that other people don't like threads being reprinted in the tabloids. Clearly this is a subject you feel very strongly about, but calling people 'thick' for posting sensitive stuff on the Relationships forum? Really?)

I agree that a warning would be a good idea, OP. This clearly isn't going to stop happening any time soon, and MN don't want to make any changes to the site or boards. It isn't unreasonable for people to not know this happens - support boards on the internet have been around much, much longer than the lifting of material from said support boards by the tabloid press. I get a bit that people need to be told that trolls exist - but hey, if you don't know then you don't know, and better a warning than you pouring your heart out to the latest scam artist.

I suppose it's a good way to publicise a blog or business, though. Use your own name, start a thread about what a cunt your mother is, and voilá. The internet will eat itself.

I saw the story they lifted. Just awful of them.

It made me vow never to post anything personal again.

The thing is though, Where the hell else can some of us go to vent, to get support, to get a myriad of opinions, if we cannot use Mumsnet or any other site for fear of being outed?'

It would be a real shame if the Relationships board here ended up as a bleak wasteland of trolls and penis-beaker posts, too. Relationship advice in many places on the internet is utter shit. I had to stop reading one parenting board elsewhere because of the number of fucking awful posts about men who weren't doing anything to help with the kids, or were yelling at/being physically rough with/emotionally abusing the kids, and there would always be people telling the woman to arrange a few more date nights and encourage him more and have more sex with the poor neglected soul.

"actually, she apparently received a CBE for 'services to the economy' - which at least is a more honest recognition of Mumsnet as a money-spinner than its tagline would have you entertain."

This exactly. And we all know how many fake threads appear as click bait. My guess, theres a higher probability that the DM lifted threads are HQ generated in the first place, thus avoiding any possible litigation from any individual impacted. The only posters pissed off are those who take the time to reply and provide the saleable fodder, not the originating author. So for me, if its in DM, its been a fake all along and MN know that. Its all about the responses and posters are being played.

I don't post much anymore due to the DM saga and I most definitely don't start threads...it's killed this site for me.

Chris1234567890, bloody hell. That theory is a Guardian story in its own right.