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.

The night watch do as good a job as it can, but relying on volunteers when MN and Justine in particular make as much as they do isn't on.

I love MN but the fact that they have VOLUNTEERS overnight to deal with potential disasters such as these awful photos, is appalling

Stop the facility to upload photos for everyone

Pay the volunteers

No, it goes further than not using volunteers.

The ability needs to be stopped altogether.

These photos need to never be seen by anyone, it shouldn’t get to a point where pictures need to be reported to someone who then needs to remove them. They shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Justine is a millionaire for fuck’s sake. I hope she’s proud of what she’s created.

Another solution would be to, IDK, pay people in Australia to manage the site overnight. You wouldn't even have to pay overnight rates....

Awful! Has anyone independently reported this to the police? It’s a criminal matter obviously and I’m not sure the owners of mn can be trusted to report and follow procedures when they haven’t responded to reports made over 7 hours ago.

No.

Professionals who are employed to deal with these kinds of crimes are given very specific counselling to help them to process the kinds of images they have to review as part of their job.

Nobody who works for what is essentially a general chat fforum is equipped either mentally or emotionally to have to deal with that.

They shouldn’t be paying someone, the ability to upload images of that nature shouldn’t be there in the first place.

nobody should have to see them.

Completely agree, it’s exploitation. Mnet is a very profitable business.

I reckon that the volunteers are on the cusp of meeting the definition of an employee in legal terms too.

it has always made me cross tbh. A profitable business that exists largely for women exploiting the same women in their own homes.

MNHQ will no doubt do this as soon as they start work this morning. It's pointless random people on here call the police as without access to MN's internal IT system nothing can be done by anyone else.

The photos were up for at least 40 minutes after they were posted on one thread. I do think that lag, and the fact that the night watch doesn't have the ability to close the site temporarily, will give MN some very difficult questions to answer.

Hopefully people report to the police. This site is no longer safe to use.

This is insane. Mumsnet moderation has got worse & worse the more money the site has got. There is no excuse. The exploitation of the Night Watch, everything... They have to do something. It shoyld never have got to thus position...😡

It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. The site is still run like a small chat forum and to say it hasn’t kept up with the times is somewhat of an understatement.

They make millions in profit and they’re still trying to save a few quid by getting volunteers to moderate. Unbelievable.

Yes I wonder if it's been easy to get complacent because the "core demographic" is hardly likely to need much watching for posting graphic pictures. But the site is a target for all sorts now.

I'm so sorry that people saw images, and well done to the NightWatch volunteers.

I do think that it is time for HQ to have a rethink.

Maybe they could consider a system where posts containing uploaded photos should have to be vetted and approved by a moderator first before the post can appear. But they might decide that's more trouble and expense than it's worth and it's easier to just remove the ability to upload photos alogether. Clearly something needs to change.

Yes agree. I'm nervous to open any thread and so will be deleting the app. Please make a report

www.iwf.org.uk/en/uk-report/

That depends.

All it takes is for someone to have screenshot any of the messages with the MN logo against them and the police could very well already be aware.

A situation like this isn’t something which should have to wait until someone gets into work, someone should have been contactable 24/7 to deal with a situation like this.

Someone posting pictures like these is undoubtedly a sicko, but having the ability to distribute these images to millions of users puts mn in a similar camp in terms of criminal responsibility.

Filters do exist to be able to prevent retain wording and images to be able to be posted on platforms, it’s a very valid question as to why MN didn’t have such filters in place.

Has there been a specific failure that other forums wouldn’t have had? Are other places- twitter, insta, facebook- protected from such behaviour?

I stopped using mnet about a decade ago after an overnight incident and Justine’s defence of using volunteers. It made me so cross. I was away for a few years.

The site needs a robust system of control, 24 hours a day. It also needs to stop exploiting the women it serves.

It isn’t the village WI, it is a multi million pound income, profitable business (now with two other companies registered).

i remember someone making this point YEARS ago last time somebody trolled in the night. Why has nothing been done?

Hard disagree. You don’t know if children are actively at risk and you don’t wait 7+ hours to report. You’re also expecting a commercial enterprise who’ve hosted csa images to report themselves. There is more than one criminal offence in this.

The moderators refusing to report to the police?

They clearly don’t have adequate policies let alone action plans for this.