It's time to rethink the Night Watch volunteer system

[TwigletsAndRadishes]

After the truly awful photos that have been posted on MNin the early hours of this morning, which I will never un-see, I think you need to have a different policy for overnight moderation.

The site is big enough and money-making enough to support a better system by now. There really needs to be proper 24 hour IT cover. At the very least, the Night Watch volunteers should be able to call a member of MNHQ who is on call overnight who has the ability to either deal with the issue or shut the whole forum down until it can be dealt with properly by the IT bods in the morning.

It's only been a handful of threads affected this evening, but it could potentially be a major spamming of dozens or even hundreds of threads next time. This site is used in other parts of the world in different time zones where more people risk seeing the grossly disturbing content than a relative handful of us up at 3am in the UK.

The current system relies on posters reporting any offending theads and hoping that a volunteer will pick up the report in good time and hide the thread. This morning one of the threads affected took far too long to be hidden, not that I am blaming an unpaid volunteer for that.

Agreed. Also: are posters able to post photos as soon as they join MN? Perhaps the ability to post photos should be restricted?

I thought it was

It's years since I posted a photo, but as I recall you can only post a limited amount in a day or a short time frame of some sort? I'm sure this was probably just one sicko acting alone, but possibly with more than one account on different devices. Imagine if it was some sort of orchestrated attack involving many people with separate accounts, or someone IT savvy enough to work out how to hack the site and spam it with images over dozens and dozens of theads at once. No way could the volunteers keep up with that.

All a poster has to do is set up an account and wait for however long it takes to be allowed to post photos though. It stops people signing up to post images on the spot, but that's all.

This is potentially something AI could handle with ease, even with blocks in place MN side. Set up multiple email addresses and accounts and wait. If MN put in a minimum number of posts before you can post any photos, AI can read the thread and give a basic response like chat gpt could. Then spam threads en masse. Rinse and repeat using VPNs and rotating IP addresses to avoid detection.

All can be run by creating a bot and essentially pressing two buttons (account creation/meeting minumum posts + the actual spamming). MN needs to seriously overhaul how it handles moderation.

Agree.
Absolutely shocking how long the thread stayed up.
Criminal negligence.

I reported it as CSA and thought it would be removed in seconds.

I saw them (and reported them) on a thread at around 11.15 so not early hours so if they were still being posted on different threads in the hours after then the team were aware what was happening.

Assuming the photos were what I think they were from previous posts mn need to remove the ability to post pictures altogether.

Receiving CSA images in law amounts to “making” images of child sexual abuse and men is criminally culpable at this point. If they allow even one such picture through the site could in fact be shut down and the owners could be charged with creating CSA images.

Pictures need to go. It’s unfortunate but this is the nature of the internet now.

MN should be shut down entirely until they can prevent this. As I said before, this is criminal negligence.

Mmm I wonder if the DM have been informed yet that MN is allowing CSA images.

The media are going to have a field day.

Crikey what on Earth?????

well done to night watch, that can't have been easy

I hope the focus will be involving the police and getting the sicko arrested and charged.
The police will get an urgent warrant, and his whole house will require a search and any office or business premises.

Given in total the distribution could be hundreds of people it carries a custodial sentence.

I am so sorry you had to see that op.

I hope the perpetrator can be traced. What a horrific thing to do.

And don’t forget night watch are volunteers - it’s not something they imagined they would have to do. Thank goodness we have them or the images would have remained there all night..

Anyone affected should seek support in real life. It can be traumatising.

No moderators should have to deal with that, but least of all volunteers. MN need to respond to this quickly and throw some money at the problem, two things they haven't typically demonstrated around moderation and technical enhancements to limit abuse of the site by spammers.

Where the fuck are MN HQ? Clearly they were blissfully sleeping while making money from the crappy adverts which seem to infiltrate every bloody page you go on now while they were also being used to host CSA images. I hope they’re proud of what they’ve become.

Yes mumsnet make enough money they need a new system which pays professionals.

a lot of women up in the middle of the night on this site are women doing night shifts with Newborns.

sounds like about 4 hours between the first and last pictures being posted. Absolutely disgusting that action wasn’t taken sooner by the site.

so sorry for anyone who saw those images 😞

I think this was always a hazard.

AI could be employed to check the photos before posting
Or photos should not be permitted, only verified links for things like shopping. If you have a question about a medical issue then that is a sign to get some medical help not post on MN.

Oh my god!
Sick bastards, that's utterly horrific.
To anyone who saw and our poor night watch volunteers, I'm so sorry.
Definitely need to look at rules around new posters, this is shocking.

I’m in the UK and often on MN in the middle of the night due to insomnia. I very narrowly missed seeing these images, as I was on one of the threads affected but thankfully fell asleep. I know it would have deeply traumatised me to have seen such images, and as OP mentioned, this sort of thing can never be unseen. I feel so sorry for those MNers affected by this and feel strongly that MN needs to do something immediately to resolve this, and if they don’t, I hope they are shamed all over the press for lack of action!

Volunteers . Why would MN use volunteers and not paid employees?

Agreed.

You know why 💰

Yes thanks to the Night Watch team and I do want to reiterate that I, and I think I can speak for everyone else, in no way blame you AT ALL for the length of time those images were visible. You do a great job and it's far beyond your remit to have to deal with traumatising stuff like that anyway, let alone be available at the drop of a hat in the middle of the night to react super-quickly when presumably you have other stuff going on, hence why you are up and awake at all.

We all appreciate you but it's time MN did the right thing and stood you down.