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.

That's actually a really good point and I'm so sorry to hear about what you and everyone else went through last night.

I've often thought that the bare minimum MN could have done with the NW was give them MN names in the same way that the paid staff have. (In order to differentiate as you say)

It now makes me wonder if they deliberately didn't do this as to put the onus solely on the volunteer. It seems so weird now I think about it. Like MN didn't really want them to actually be linked / affiliated with MN at all.

Poor NW. They have been doing a fantastic job against all the odds, then they get this awful mess landed on them.

No, it's not. We need to be able to discuss what happened and how it's made us feel.

yes, mumsnet will really enrage many if they try take down this thread. And I’ve archived it. Also worth reaching out to the brands that they are advertising on this thread, bet they would be thrilled to know their wares are being advertised on a thread about csa images being shown to their audience….

It's baffling to me how responses from MN when something goes wrong always make it sound like they're running a little hobby site from someone's living room.

The PP means copying and saving it, rather than hiding it away.

The images will still be in the browser cache for anyone who viewed them. Everything you view on a web browser is downloaded and stored in a temporary cache on your computer so the images are still there.

It's usually cleared after about a month, but images can stay there for up to a year, maybe longer in some cases.

Clearing the cache and clearing your browser history are not the same thing.

Also just a tip to those who saw this last night - playing Tetris can help with PTSD. It's a proven fact.

I don’t feel safe using MN anymore. I can’t unsee that. If it could be posted on that thread it could be posted on any thread. It wasn’t a link, it was just there as you scrolled down the thread.

Images need to be disabled until there’s some better system in place.

I'm annoyed that MN will actually be benefitting from this dreadful event.
All our clicks and extra traffic as we discuss it .
All those adverts crossing our screens.

It was stressful, It doesn't help that night watch volunteers don't have a blue colour background or anything to indicate they are volunteers/admin.

Anyone can easily change username to something like Nightwatch2025 and we would be non the wiser if they are the real night watch or not. I was only clicking on the site stuff and night watch threads as was too scared to click on anything else.

Their attitude has definite PTA vibes. And we’re not on the committee…

If a person goes online and looks at images of CSA the police can track them down. I am not sure how it works, but does that mean that those people who saw the images last night could potentially be contacted by the police?

I once saw an inappropriate image on here , undoubtedly posted by a pathetic sicko but not thankfully CSA.

There are many people online who brag about “trolling” Mumsnet but to show CSA is vile.

The money MN make could easily pay for true mods who could block and zap Offensive and illegal images.

I’m screenshooting them all, to send to the media about the absolute scandal this whole mess has turned into!

Guessing the brands are going to be furious that they are being advertised on this thread. Mumsnet. More like exploitation-of-volunteers-and-traumatising-mums-net

I can't imagine the advertisers who pay a lot of money will be happy when this hits the media.

I have just had a look and this username is actually available which goes further to prove the point. How do we even know who to trust in such a situation when there is no way to distinguish between the night watch admin and normal posters.

Some people use adblockers that mean no ads at all…

@BeckyAMumsnet
Presumably there will be some sort of bigger notice from MNHQ?

Within that can you (they) provide some proper info on how we clear our devices for those that are not aware and who may not be on these threads and may not be as digitally literate as others. Perhaps an All User email with appropriate directions from your tech team.

Many of us work in areas where having such images on devices is a huge issue (I mean it's a huge issue anyway). Not to mention those who may have been MN on work devices via the website.

X post there. Fully agree. This could be very financially damaging. And rightly so.

Sadly posting images of CSE is the go-to move for a certain set of activists who have decided they want to get a site/community taken down. Reddit regulars will be familiar with the modus operandi - post materials to a sub, report materials, get sub shut down.

Having worked in the tech side of trying to keep that filth off ordinary sites, even the big social media platforms are playing daily wack-a-mole trying to keep it all at bay. MN will definitely do not have their resources.

What we need is a globally available open source tool to detect and pre-reject CSA from being uploaded/shared, but that would piss off the porn industry too much because it might impact their "barely legal" industry. (Gross but true. Sorry.)

If so, I hope that MN would be ultimately responsible for that as it’s their poor practices that allowed us to be exposed to the material.

I was reading on my laptop (rather than logged in on my phone) so I couldn’t report.

Why on earth not @GreylingsSkin?

I nearly always use my laptop and the report button is right there under the message.

That isn’t the response from MNHQ that I was expecting to read for such a serious issue. Very, very poor. It’s a minimising and insulting response to all of us that saw those images and can’t unsee them. I have gone from shocked and upset to being really f**king angry.

You took a screenshot of the images? If so, I would be extremely careful about doing that