Moderation Sex Board

[onirgellep]

Back in February Justine* committed to an urgent review of moderation of the Sex Board subsequent to the considerable concerns mainly arising from the longstanding Sex Chat thread

Unsurprisingly, issues continue

Would it be possible to have an update on the progress of the review?

And hear when do you anticipate it being completed and the new moderation put into action?

Thank you

I'm afraid I'm unable to link Justine's post on the thread References to Underage Sex on the Sex Board* page 13

Let's not get into a nanny state though. Do we really need MN to hold our hands and protect us from every unsavoury thing that might be out there?? If you post on a public forum, which this is - please remember - then any other member of the public can respond to what you've written, or respond to you directly. You can turn that facility off (by not accepting PMs) or you can ignore them, or you can report them if they're really offensive.

Yea, absolutely we (and MN) have an obligation to try and keep everyone safe and prevent abuse but, seriously. Getting upset because anyone can PM you?? Don't use Mumsnet if you are scared of that.

The issue is safeguarding, not distaste.

Exactly this.

It's tricky tho' isn't it

No-one confirms that they are over 18 when they join MN - and how could it be verified anyway

Logging in and confirming over 18 to view NSFW material - also unverifiable

It looks like window dressing to me not effective safeguarding

FWIW I think the Online Safety Bill is mostly an unworkable shitshow and a threat to freedom of speech but if this amendment passes then Mumsnet deserve to be caught by it.

Getting upset because anyone can PM you?? Don't use Mumsnet if you are scared of that.

Go and tell the House of Lords! You have no idea what's going on do you?

You can't on the one hand present yourself as a parenting forum, championing the cause of online child safety, and on the other hand have such a lax attitude to the content you host that any child could just wander in and engage in xxx chat with anonymous adults with no safeguards whatsoever.

The sex people should also care about this even if they don't give a shit about safeguarding and only care about themselves. There are legal implications for anyone who engages in sex chat with a minor. 'Didn't know' doesn't always cut it if you should have known or if you were made aware of specific risks.

I understand that there are a bunch of people looking for a good, relatively unsleazy venue for their sex chat hobby. Good luck, Mumsnet is not it but neither is any other venue that does nothing to protect you from sexual interactions with minors.

Also.

Making and distributing indecent images of a minor is a thing

If people here are swapping pics of themselves, mumsnet could be right on the hook for enabling that because there is absolutely no age verification and the sex board is open to all without registering.

What's to stop someone sending in decent images of a person under 18 in PMs?

It is tricky.

I don't think there are any bullet proof ways of protecting children online but a parenting site that doesn't even look as if it's trying is not somewhere I want to be.

How would age verification work?

There's loads of different ways to do it. These could include but are not limited to requirement to enter date of birth, requirement to enter id document number such as driving licence or passport, requirement to enter a credit card number.

There are also apps that do it via facial age estimation or there's another app I can't remember the name of that links face to an id doc (I could look that up but it's on my work laptop and I don't remember the specific details. They did a presentation at work about 3/4 years ago)

There's also various other methods in development that involve sharing of specific information to specific websites and organisations.

In a nutshell, mumsnet could choose any one of a number of methods.

But is that proportionate to the risk? Entering credit card details before joining MN, they'll never do that. It would put so many people off and presumably have all sorts of Data Protection and storage implications for MN.

You'll note I didn't recommend any specific method for mumsnet.

The question was "how would age verification work" and I answered that question.

I did not suggest that anyone would need to enter a credit card to access mumsnet.

Proportionate to the risk?
Anything which mitigates risk to children cannot be regarded as disproportionate.

Mumsnet already have a payment processor for premium. If they used the same payment processor and PCI standards to verify age with a credit card there would be no data protection implications, as long as the privacy statement and statement when giving credit card details were clear on the basis for processing.

Again, not at all suggesting that would be the method mumsnet would wish to use, merely correcting the statement that there would be data protection implications.

Absolutely. In which case the internet should be banned.

@Maybebe what do you mean?

This type of scenario is something that comes up regularly in my job. I answered a question. What did I do wrong?

Nothing. Don't rise to it.

we'd be grateful if this thread could remain about policy, rather than personal comments about individual posters.

Obviously this only applies to particular posters, right? Not to me ...

There are also apps that do it via facial age estimation

Well, that wouldn’t work on here considering half the site claims to look like teenagers 😂

Can’t they make some kind of subscription model for the sex board (not necessarily paid for, but requiring some sort of age verification)? That would give some kind of protection.

I won't rise to it @TheShellBeach

Stating ‘with respect’ doesn’t make the statement that follows respective. In fact it’s usually the opposite, like in this case.

It’s creepy to ask someone to find you sex sites. It’s not lighthearted, it would make lots of posters feel extremely uncomfortable. That could have been the aim of course. A man pushing boundaries. Revolting.

Then you minimising and telling the poster to basically lighten up, that the poster must take it as a joke, that they are the problem. No, the problem is the poster who asked for suggestions and men like you who try to pressure others into accepting that this sort of thing is acceptable.

They could. That would be one possible solution. But if they do that it will impact on the google search impact so they may not want to go down that road.

Making it only available to premium subscribers would be a quick and easy answer.

Thank you. I've heard of proposals requiring credit/debit card numbers but I haven't used any sites that require it for access.

The most strigent I've seen is an 'I'm over 18' button which frankly seems so insecure as to be pointless. The same applies to dob.

DOB and or a button "I am over 18" are the lowest form of protection and the ones that are easiest for minors to circumvent.

I would suggest they are inappropriate for a sex board.

Are we just talking about the sex board or the whole of MN?

There's a months old thread in Chat that details a man performing analingus on a women. It's more descriptive than anything I've read on the sex board.