Linking Sensitive Threads to Social Networking Sites

[WhenwillIfeelnormal]

Please can you take a look at this thread in AIBU which explains the rationale behind this appeal.

When Mumsnet decided to provide the facility to link threads to Facebook and Twitter, several of us had grave reservations about this move. When it was clear that Mumsnet was going to continue with the policy, I started a thread asking for you to consider removing the buttons from the most sensitive discussion boards, such as Relationships, Bereavement and SN. Others made similar requests and you were kind enough to agree.

At the time, I said that just removing the buttons without having a permanent request and rationale on display, might not be enough to dissuade posters from linking sensitive threads to those sites. Unfortunately, no such written appeal has been displayed.

Last night a poster decided to link a very sensitive thread on to Twitter and the issue for me is not about privacy. The OP in that thread is pragmatic enough to know that what we write on here can never be considered private.

The issue is more to do with human consideration and making a decision not to invite Twitter followers to gawp at another person's distress.

Could you please consider writing a policy on this issue, with clear expectations about users' behaviour, including any penalties that will occur if this is transgressed. Could this policy also be reinforced at the top of each of the non-Twitter/FB linked boards please, because it is evident from the AIBU and sensitive thread concerned, that many users hadn't noticed the absence of the FB and Twitter buttons on those boards.

Thank you.

Shall we take the cab to Reality Street here?

People:

THE INTERNET IS WRITTEN IN INK NOT PENCIL

If you post something it's in cyber space pretty much for good you CAN'T rub it out.

If you DON'T want to run the risk of being Tweeted FB'd MySpaced or linked via any website - it takes about as much time to set up a free website as it does to set up a free email address.

DON'T POST

As has been explained the removal of buttons won't help as you can c&p the link easily.

If you don't want people to know who you are don't visit websites the owners can see your IP address. Whois.net will tell them loads of information about you simply from an IP address.

Having a conversation online is no more private than having one in RL. You don't know who's reading/listening and if in 'private' you don't know if the person you are speaking to will repeat it and a search engine will pick it up.

What is, in essence, being asked is for MNHQ not only to police the net but, for them to police 'decency' or intent. I know they are good but sheesh!

KnowsThisWillFallOnDeafEarsTiggaxx

I agree with Noddy that many posters, perhaps naively, see MN as different to other forums. And tbh if I was faced with the dilemma SS had, I would probably be miffed that it was tweeted - as the views of other parents on this matter are likely to be v different to a single, male tweeter, for example.

SS presumably posted to get other parent's perspective, not to hear what the whole Internet thinks about porn....

I haven't looked at the thread today but if it has indeed turned nasty why nor just ask for it to be deleted now?

I don't think anyone needs to "take a cab to Reality Street" and neither the poster hurt by these or me, the OP, are naive. I have no idea why this has to be on permanent repeat so that some posters understand this - it really isn't a difficult message to comprehend.

It's not about privacy. It's not about anonymity.

It's about discouraging posters from tweeting sensitive threads from the boards that have no buttons. It's about discouraging posters from making indefensibly cruel remarks about other posters - remarks that if made on this site and on the threads concerned, would lead to them being deleted and possibly banned.

This site has a troll policy, that discourages troll hunting. Apparently one of the early Tweets about the sensitive thread was that the OP was a troll. Personal, nasty and spiteful remarks are expressly discouraged on this site and yet some of the most noxious and offensive remarks about Mumsnet posters, either as a group or as individuals, were tweeted by a Mumsnetter about a Mumsnet thread.

It is pointless having policies about troll- hunting, making spiteful personal remarks and removing the Twitter and Facebook links from certain boards, if there is no supporting policy in place from MNHQ about the expectations it has about its members' behaviour.

And for the sake of clarity, I well understand that MNHQ is not responsible for the behaviour of people on other sites - that's for those sites to police.

However, I do think MNHQ has a responsibility to actively discourage its membership using other sites to flout the troll policy and using hyperlinks to Mumsnet, to do it. And to discourage cowardly, nasty, spiteful and misogynistic remarks being made about Mumsnet posters via a link to MN. And to make its policy clear about the behaviour they expect from posters who are thinking of linking a sensitive thread, on a board that doesn't have the link facilities.

No-one is naive enough to think that every Mumsnet poster is a decent sort. There will always be spiteful people in the world and within every community.

That doesn't mean we have to wring our hands and do nothing to discourage it.

Morning all,
Been catching up on this thread and the other related ones this morning, as I've been away.

The issue here, I think, is one of sensitivity. From our perspective, it's very difficult to either enforce or have clear guidelines on this - as many have pointed out deciding where to draw the line is pretty impossible, as is enforcing that line.

We can certainly put up something in our etiquette about how it's not nice to tweet/fb about threads of a very personal nature but again, it comes down to a decision about what is "very personal" and that's a subjective judgement.

Tbh I don't think you can effectively enforce sensitivity in a top down kind of way. The way communities like ours tend to impose etiquettes is by expressing disapproval of certain behaviours, which makes people less likely to behave that way. I believe that's kind of what's happened here.

The main reason MN allows posters nicknames rather than real names is that conversations are public and searchable and the nature of the internet means that folks will link to and discuss anything and everything on it. So we think it's important that people who want to get advice about personal stuff don't have to reveal their identity. But that doesn't mean it's private, it's just not easily identifiable.

I'm sorry Sensitivitysquared that in some ways your experience has been the "case study" here - clearly it's not been a pleasant experience for you and that's a shame because our aim is to make parents' lives easier, not the reverse.

Completely balanced and acceptable response.

Once again, totally agree with WWIFN's summarising.

Justine, I'm not sure that your statement "The way communities like ours tend to impose etiquettes is by expressing disapproval of certain behaviours, which makes people less likely to behave that way. I believe that's kind of what's happened here." is actually true, although I, like lots of other posters would like it to be. In fact, it appears that 'expressing disapproval' in this case has actually led to some kind of mob mentality, to SS being hounded at times, and to no conclusion of what is or isn't acceptable in terms of respact or consideration to other posters, being reached.

Certainly it would appear that the related threads have been tweeted several times over by different posters, so no change in ettiquette or behaviour has been imposed.

respect, obviously, not respact!

But there is nothing personal in the thread that Wannabe started. Or this one. So no reason not to share them with others.

This is a prime example of something that should be shared and brought to the attention of other mners as it is setting the future norms of the forum.

Sorry, should add that a number of the posts on the other thread did become personal by way of the normal thread drift. But the OP of the thread and the initial discussions were not personal, raised important points about how people should manage the information that they share online and therefore sharing that thread wouldn't offend the MNs "don't share if it's very personal" guideline.

I don't think it does come down to a decision about "what is very personal". You can put a statement on the top of all the boards without linked buttons and ask people not to link the threads. This supports what was presumably your rationale for removing the buttons from those boards, doesn't it?

The decision posters make is therefore not about whether the thread is sensitive or personal, since it evidently is sensitive and personal if it's been posted on a board without the linked buttons and especially if there's a statement from Mumsnet to confirm that. The decision then becomes about whether a poster is going to ignore MNHQ's steer (not to mention decency and fair-play) and link regardless.

This thread came about because users don't know how MNHQ stand on this. Your policy is oblique. You seem to be encouraging linking to Twitter and FB on the one hand, but discouraging it on the other (removal of the buttons). Except the discouragement is more oblique and the encouragement, transparent.

What I am saying is that you can do both. You can encourage traffic to this site and also discourage personal sensitive matters being taken "off site". You can discourage people from flouting your troll policy too.

but WWIFN a thread is not necessarily sensitive purely because of where it is posted, hence why justine has made the comment that the sensitivity of a thread is personal to the indivisual(s) concerned.

Lots of people post sensitive threads in chat in order that they be able to disappear in a set amount of days (can't remember without going back to look how many days it is). The twitter buttons are on the chat threads, should users therefore post somewhere where there isn't a twitter button and where there might be a disclaimer even if they want the thread to disappear?

Equally lots of people do post in relationships about light-hearted things - which sex toy to buy, for instance, which might be amusing to some. Should a light-hearted thread not be allowed to be retweeted by virtue of the fact it is in a topic with a disclaimer?

And again, what do you want mn hq to do about it? And how do you expect them to be able too enforce any kind of policy you would propose?

Clearly mn are happy to be on twitter and facebook. ultimately it still comes down to individual preference - if you wouldn't be happy for your life to be exposed via social media, then it is down to each individual to decide whether their dilemma outweighs their need for privacy/sensitivity.

Plenty of sensitive threads kick off on the threads themselves, while tweeting about them does expand that potential, generally it only expands it to other mumsnetters who would probably have seen the threads in active convos anyway.

And a journalist is far more likely to find threads for their papers/discussion phone-ins on active convos than twitter, since twitter moves too fast and is too diverse..

Dittany, that thread was hilarious, you couldn't make it up. It was out there for tens of thousands of people to see...I put it out to possibly 290 extra people.

You only jumped into the thread in the first place because of your agenda, anything that mentions pornography and you're in like Flynn.

WannaBe I completely take your point that people post sensitive issues in Chat because of the archiving issue. I believe that threads are removed after 90 days on there. However, bear in mind that for those of us who were around in the Spring when MNHQ added the link buttons - and then removed them from certain boards - that decision informed some of us, about where to post sensitive issues thereafter.

I don't think it gave a false sense of security either - we were all aware that this wasn't about privacy and most posters are pretty sensible about identification issues. However, when MNHQ removed the buttons, that decision came with an implicit expectation that people would not link the threads.

I entirely accept that some people will always override fair play and decency and go ahead anyway. I am merely saying that MNHQ has a duty to discourage it, supporting their own oblique decision to remove the buttons from the sensitive boards, in the process. I think the steer on this is far too woolly, with the result that large numbers of posters didn't even realise there were no buttons available on some boards. I said in the Spring that just removing the buttons wasn't enough.

I would prefer it if MN users knew MN's policy and steer on this. That we knew that if we post on Chat or any board with the buttons, MNHQ thinks that those threads are fair game for linking. And for posters to know that MNHQ disapprove of people linking threads on boards that have no buttons. Posters can then make decisions accordingly.

I entirely agree it's not going to stop people doing the wrong thing and apparently it's impossible (or there's no will) to police it, but it doesn't mean we cannot expressly discourage people in this community from doing something that is hurtful to others. I don't think MNHQ can sit on the fence with this; it's their site and they have every right (and responsibility) to make clear their expectations of members, even if they cannot penalise posters who fall short.

Alouiseg posting here yet again that you think a distressed poster's thread was "hilarious" (yesterday you said you were "amused" by it and described it as a "bad sitcom") is just wrong.

It was a clumsy situation and it was handled clumsily, which was my original post in the thread. It degenerated quickly into a load of old bollocks and back to the pro/anti porn brigade. Which wasn't what the original thread was really about. It was a scrum and a free for all, and one of the biggest rucks I've seen on Mn for a long time.

I won't be opening my twitter feed up, there's enough mnetters on there to give you quotes Dittany. If you weren't on there before you don't need to be now. Or you could just ask to follow like anyone else.

Alouiseg....most people's objection to porn includes the exploitation of women, it's a big ask to expect people to comment on the secret use without talking about why they object to it.

All threads deviate, mutate and change and most sane people object to the exploitation of women, or men and especially children.

What never ceases to astound on here is the level of denial that people/men actually use porn. Then there was the description of what act he'd actually been looking at. The further abhorrence that it was a double penetration shot. Would she have been less shocked if it was a blow job scene??

Why you would ask your children before your husband before your husband about ownership of such a thing.......life really is stranger than fiction!

I was going to leave all the discussions but after her rantings last night, twisting my words, my context and criticising my spelling on Twitter??! I have a serious "fuck it" moment.

Alouise, I don't believe you're that naive.

But see the fact that someone can protect their tweets is exactly why you cannot possibly police any kind of policy on here. Similarly with facebook - you can choose who does and who doesn't read it, so there is no way of even being able to know who tweeted what and who said what to who and who started it and who came on the thread because of twitter or active convos.

This is not about one thread. I have no opinion on the thread, and at no point did I make any derogatory comments about the op of that thread, the only thing I said was that the thread was very much a who-can-voice-the-strongest-opinion contest, and I stand by that. But that has no bearing on my opinion of the op or what she went through.

Fwiw I don't like porn and I wouldn't like it if my dh was using it. But I don't feel strongly enough about it to voice an opinion really, and I object to being called someone's "porn mate" just because I think someone can tweet about a public thread on a public message board. I would have the same opinion if the subject matter was something I felt strongly about, I have voiced that opinion enough on here for people to be able to realise that.

WWIFN I said it on the other thread but will say it here too: I think that sensitivity and privacy go hand in hand. Privacy is potentially not such a big deal if you're posting about the mundane parts of your life, but more so if you're posting about more sensitive things, or even about other people who could be recognised if you were recogniseable.

I'm not at all naive. Naive in relation to what?

Honestly I would be shocked, not stunned, if I found my DH using porn. I know he's not anti porn but wouldn't really have much time to actually look at it, I would be offended more so about double penetration that an oral sex shot. That goes without saying really. Same as if it was a particular fetish.

Yes I agree that whenever a Mumsnetter posts anything on here, s/he accepts that there will be some very cruel and insensitive posters who will have the ability to link the thread to a site with a very different culture and worse still, suggest on that site that they believe s/he is a troll and make derogatory comments about him/her and the posters who offered support.

My point is that Mumsnet should actively discourage that behaviour and explain why there are no link buttons on certain boards, while pointing out that they can/will do nothing to monitor or police it.

And for MNHQ to take action against posters who post on this site that someone else's distressing family situation is "hilarious".