Rebecca Flood - The Sun newspaper

[Begginngletter]

Rebecca Flood - you picked up my post yesterday and you put it on your website.

You have taken the worst day of my life and made it 10000 times worse. Before you shared that, I was just about managing in this situation, now I am not.

I have emailed you and I have emailed your editors to beg you to remove it. You have ignored me.

I want to ask you here to please reconsider. Please show some compassion and don’t publicise this awful situation.

I am far from home and wanted to talk to some of my family about what has happened and now cannot, because I know some of them read that paper. They would be horrified that it had appeared there. I now feel completely alone in dealing with this.

Perhaps I was silly to put it on a public forum but I needed immediation help from people who didn’t know my family. Mumsnet always give you the option to remove such posts if you’re uncomfortable and I posted in the knowledge that I could do that somewhere down the line is needed.

You, on the other hand, have taken the worst thing I have ever been through and shared it irreversibly for the world to see.

If anyone is reading this and knows how I could escalate this, please let me know.

I realise this may draw even more attention to said story, but I am desperate for it to be removed before I tell my wider family what’s going on.

OP - it also appears on Kidspot.com.au. At the very bottom of the post it states “this article was published in The Sun and has been republished here with permission”

‘The Sun’ is a hyperlink that goes directly to the article which includes screenshots of your post.

I’m so sorry to bring your more bad news.

I don't know what thread it was but have just gone on to the sun website. What a load of salacious, gossipy crap. Can't believe people read that bullshit.

I just read her article the photo to go with it is so cringe.

If it's the thread I think it is I commented yesterday, sorry it's gone viral but it was obvious that it would.

As someone above said I assume you are a new poster as this has been happening for years, you can usually tell from the first couple of posts which threads will be picked up but unfortunately there's no way to stop it.

I've just checked, it's still on their fb page.

I can still find it on the SCUM ooppps sorry Sun website!

If you do need more support OP then ensure you use swear words in your title and lots of swear words in your opening post.

I'm so sorry you are going through this.
I really hope you manage to get things sorted out though.

I'm fairly new and had no idea his happens. Can someone explain? As this is apparently an anonymous forum how would the op be identified through the article anyway?

Sorry you are going through this OP. I hope it turns out all right.

These journalists are disgusting and ammoral. They don't give a thought or a care as to how this affects people.

Wonder if they went to university and how much their degree to C&P with a few words thrown in cost them.

Some people I work with read The Sun. I think slightly less of them, I must admit. A joke of a paper.

I don't accept that this kind of thing is inevitable. I accept that putting something on the internet anonymously is a risk, but I do not think we should accept that the cheap rags pick over the space and turn what can be valuable support into freakshow-style entertainment, when all they would have to do is have the morals of a goldfish and... Not do that

If that was aimed at me; I absolutely agree, I was just preparing OP for what IPOS usually say.

I'm with Countess and everyone else 100%.

I am so sorry for you OP. This might get removed as a TAAT but just know that when people who were on that thread realised they were horrified.

I hope you can take them to court somehow even though it's a public forum

Thinking of you

I hope you can take them to court somehow even though it's a public forum

I think I actually love you a little bit for your naivety! You sound like a very lovely and sweet person

The sad thing is this is how dehumanisation takes place amongst the far right and is becoming far too common in our society. The fact journalists who you would think got into journalism for far better reasons have resorted to this kind of thing really does make me worry about where society is heading.

It's been removed from the online edition in the last few minutes. I doubt it made the print edition.

Worthless so-called fucking 'journalism'. Maybe when Rebecca Flood is asked what she does she could say 'I copy and paste people's personal painful stories from the internet and pretend it's a proper job'.

Oh love I'm so sorry this happened - please don't let it stop you accessing real life support. If the situation was reversed wouldn't you still want your loved ones to come to you about it?

If it's the story I think it is, it still seems to be available online?

I see that disgusting rag is still at it. Every time I see The Sn on sale, I try to cover it with another newspaper if I can. Begginng* I will be thinking of you when I do this tomorrow.

There are two FB groups, 'Shun the Sn' and 'Total Eclipse of the Sn', who want to see this vile publication brought down for good. Not just because of Hillsborough but for ALL the people it has hurt over the years. Anyone is welcome to join.

We use an asterisk so we are not increasing the number of mentions this foul rag gets online. We do not buy it, we do not take advantage of its offers, we do not click on their links. As mentioned, we cover it up when we can.

I'm sorry to rant, I don't mean to use your thread as a vehicle for my own beliefs. What I will say to anyone reading though - please don't go looking for this article, it's disrespectful to the OP and it's just giving more publicity to this dreadful excuse for a journo.

This type of thing used to be called plagiarism but obviously these so-called journos don't care about that.

Thanks all. Still reading all these replies while I sort out my giant mess of a life. Things pretty terrible but I’m getting on with things.

Making it so there is no space where people can safely and anonymously ask for help with deeply private pain?

While what’s happened here is of course distressing, it really isn’t the case that there is no space where you can safely and anonymously ask for help. You could speak to an organisation set up to provide support with strict confidentiality rules, a therapist or counsellor or even the Samaritans.

MN is a company built to generate profit. When you post on their forums, for free, it’s not out of the kindness of their heart, it’s because you are the product being sold. Your attention is being sold to their advertisers. That’s fine and dandy if you realise that, and I wish more people understood. Because expecting to have any control over words you’ve willingly posted on a public site owned by someone else when you’ve never been promised any kind of protection from those words being used elsewhere is futile.

I do think MN should make it even clearer when you sign up, but to be fair it’ll be in their terms of agreement you have to agree to to even be able to post and register. There has to be an element of responsibility on the individual to to make sure if they’re sharing something that would cause great pain to be disseminated elsewhere they only share it with someone/somewhere that has guaranteed confidentiality (as then you’d have a leg to stand on if it went elsewhere).

I hope my words will at least help people reading who will think twice about what they post. I think sometimes people get so sucked into the friendly nature of MN, the support, the nice moderators, they forget that this not only isn’t a confidential space, it never ever claimed to be.

Don’t share anything you wouldn’t be happy to see on the front page of a magazine tomorrow.

Don’t share identifying information: so if a story is lifted, at least it’s hard to attach it to you.

Change your username regularly (and change accounts often too, as in set up a new email address and re register as just changing your username still means they’re all linked and one NC fail will give eagle eyed posters instant access to everything posted on both usernames)

Remember you’re the product MN are selling in having a free forum, just look at the top and bottom of the page and you’ll see who your attention is being sold to.

None of this detracts from how upsetting this is for you OP. It’s a horrible lesson to learn when it happens to you. I hope you’re getting support.

We should never accept this crass and cruel violation of privacy as inevitable. There should be ethics and humanity at the forefront of guidelines to protect innocent people from being used like this.

My dear dear OP, I have no idea what story got published and I’m not going to find out, because it’s right that we don’t know unless posters were involved yesterday supporting you on your thread.

It sounds horrendous and I’m so sorry your mental health has been sacrificed on he altar of making a quick buck. Utterly foul.

You will get through this, and if it brings you any comfort, there are so many more people like me out there than like that stupid user of a rip of merchant (can’t call her a journalist because copy and pasting from Internet forums is hardly that!).

You have so many people caring about you and wishing you well. I hope you can feel that support right now through the darkness. It will get better.

We should never accept this crass and cruel violation of privacy as inevitable

I feel for OP, but what do you mean ‘cruel violation of privacy’? This is a freely accessible public forum. As soon as you submit a post on here it belongs to MN as user content. You have no control over it then, it becomes their content. A newspaper can write articles based on posts here as long as they make it clear it’s from MN (as the material belongs to them). It’s no different to you coping a post here to your private blog and crediting MN and then discussing it.

it’s in MN’s interests as it draws more hits to the site and more revenue.

Ultimately though, why are you acting like it’s a huge travesty that shouldn’t be allowed when YOU, the poster, are the one who’s agreed to it? When you sign up you agree to the sites privacy guidelines. They’re freely available for anyone to read before deciding to participate. The very fact I’m reading your opinion right now WellThisIsShit is thanks to the fact that you willingly agreed to and fully accepted those privacy guidelines.

There’s a way to not support this btw, and it’s to deactivate your account and stop using the site. It’s really quite ironic that you’re only able to complain about it because you’ve agreed and continue to agree to it.

Sorry for the derail OP. It’s really important people understand this so that this doesn’t keep happening, though I know that’s no comfort to you now

It's difficult. But it is an open forum so the risk is always there.

Still talk to your family OP if you need to. Your sister may have told them anyway