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.

This is embarrassingly amateurish response and shows you and the MNHQ are completely out of your depth managing this situation. You need to take action now, shutting the site if you can’t immediately prevent images… Platitudes don’t cut it.

I don’t agree with Banana’ characterisation of that thread. The op asked whether it would inhibit AI being used in positive ways to tackle CSAM.

Yes, she was wrong and hadn’t thought it through. It’s not wrong to ask or to misunderstand something.

And the poster is a long standing MN regular, not a flyby trouble maker.

I checked to see if it had been removed after I read about what happened last night and it was still there when I posted on this thread at 12.43 today

Actually not even one of those signposting posts pointing people to organisations if they’re in need of support. Who’s actually in charge because this is a piss poor response frankly.

There's more information on where to go if affected by issues raised on an average episode of Eastenders.

https://thesurvivorstrust.org/national-helplines/

I too wonder re governance of Mumsnet.

I hope 'they' are consulting their lawyers re liability, responsibility and risk, and with external crisis comms professionals about how better to communicate with users.

Also that 'they' organise senior management oversight around the clock as well as with IT so this serious issue cannot happen again.

But first of all they need to make the site safe. They have not given any assurance that it is… yet it is still up and running many hours later.

This is going beyond merely being a ham-fisted response to a preventable incident, and is becoming negligence on MNHQ part. I’m screenshotting this post as I don’t trust them not to take it down!

Years ago a supposedly "panicked" night watcher closes the whole site down for less serious stuff and there was uproar, so clearly there is that facility to take the whole thing off line.

I didn't see anything but thank you to all who reported and I'm very sorry for all those that saw anything. @TwigletsAndRadishes you are handling this like a complete star. I hope you are okay.

I'm not sure why the other threads discussing this had to be shut down. This is not the kind of damage limitation needed. The opposite, in fact - users need to be aware of what's happened here.

MN's response has been so amateur and unprofessional. What action are you taking? I'm horrified for the victims and appalled by the response from MN.

Given other threads are being shut (and reasonably, so that responses from HQ can be in one place, I also think there needs to be some explanation and plans going forward for the nightwatch team, who went above and beyond last night. I hope they are OK and receiving support.

If they are consulting with lawyers before taking immediate steps to make the site safe (and if they can’t do this immediately, shut it down until they can) they are negligently incompetent and not fit to run a tuck shop let alone a major website.

I can only imagine Justine and the crew are on holiday and left this some fresh-faced 18-year old intern in charge, because that’s what it feels like!

I think some of you need to log off for a bit and take a breath. You're upset, just go and do something else.

We'll get to know what we need to know when it happens. Let the bosses do their thing.

Message for MNHQ.

Please can you give assurance that it is no longer possible to post obscene and illegal images to this site.

If “yes”, why didn’t you reassure people as soon as you did this?

If “no”, why the fuck is this site still live?

I'm not sure why you keep talking about making the site safe. It's the internet, they can't guarantee safety, and if you need guarantees of safety then you shouldn't be online. This is what we teach our children.

What they should have done long ago is put proper processes in place so that when something awful like this happens, there is someone with the right access ready to shut it down.

I don't think they can do much more than a holding message today, as they'll need advice from the authorities and also need time to put in place the necessary changes. Those holding messages should be coming from people with more seniority than the day-to-day mods though.

Hiding this in site stuff means that there's plenty of users logging on who could again see CSA images. I only knew this happened because another site posted about it. The fact it's not obvious on the site or even in Active Threads, is Mumsnet trying to bury bad news and their own incompetence, whilst doing nothing to stop someone from posting more pics. You have those annoying ad threads on every board, you should have a message pinned on every page today. The fact that you CAN do this, but CHOOSE not to, says a lot. I bet the only thing you're doing behind the scenes is working to ensure those who advert with you don't leave rather than any concern for users or nightwatch.

It is a poor response , seeing those sort of images could cause untold damage to someone, MN have no idea how this may affect them and a quick 'sorry' doesn't really cut it. I only hope they are in contact with those affected off board.

If you mean New Year's Eve, that was a new member of MNHQ staff.

NWs don't have the power to close the site down.

The member of MNHQ staff didn't close the site anyway, they just stopped people from starting threads if my memory is correct.

“Their thing” appears to be to allow MN to remain live whilst sickos can still post abuse images!

I will step away, but because I need to get back to work, not because of your condescending and minimising post.

Which demonstrates an ongoing pattern of dumping people out of their depth with no back up.

Illegal images get posted on the Internet all the time.

Reddit, Facebook, Instagram....you name it.

There's no way to prevent it.

The other platforms have more robust systems in place to take these images down quickly.

Exactly.

You can't close down the internet where sickos post every day

Closing down MN where there is a lot more control and oversight and general good behaviour than most places seems a silly thing to suggest

The response from MNHQ is shocking and reeks of minimising.

Coupled with the fact that the site is full of nasty people who just like to tear people down and ads that make the site hard to use, I'll be leaving.

It's been a fun 15 years but this site is a depressing place to be these days.