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.

As has been suggested, I think stopping people from posting pictures or links (when they are a new member/new username,) would be a good idea Justine. At least for the first 7 days say...? To stop this kind of thing happening again. (Hopefully!)

It’s sad, I know mumsnet has been a lifesaver for me for many years now. I can honestly say posting and reading here got me through new babies, moving house, bereavement and so much more. I am gutted that this has happened.

@FrustratedandBemused No, please DON'T put a link - it's against the law. Maybe we could be given a way to report that is actually legal? Maybe we could be told how to do that? @JustineMumsnet

Exactly. If MN really cannot disable image posting they need to make the site read-only overnight.

Im not sure what people want from MNHQ today. I saw the images. I feel haunted by them. They shouldn’t have got on the site and cyber security needs to be stepped up here. But we’re not a committee having a round table discussion with our CEO. We won’t be told everything.

I know, I was being a bit facetious in my post previous post due to the fact that @JustineMumsnet has provided us with no guidance at all.
For clarity, PLEASE DON’T LINK

They could at least tell posters that it's illegal to link to those images, even for the purpose of reporting them, no?

Goodness. I’ve really enjoyed using Mumsnet over the years but I’m so shocked at the management of this situation- particularly the minimising and excusing language used and the lack of support for those viewing the images- completely unacceptable. Shame to have to call it a day but there’s no way I could risk continuing to use the site.

I want support for what I saw. That should be the very least they could do, given that Justine running the site to make her maximum money without doing her due diligence to protect their users. They have had ongoing issues with trolling on nights and weekends and have not take steps to strengthen weaknesses with their site.

I imagine when they get rightly sued for this, that their lack of support to those affected is going to cost her.

When there have been security breaches in the past Justine has been very open and there were long, drawn out threads of people demanding stuff from her and MNHQ. People forget that it's not compulsory to post and MNHQ do not want this to happen and will be working behind the scenes.

If you don't feel safe to post on MN right now then stay away.

Much better to have 24/4 hours mods and a filter system to block those types of photos.

It should be the bare minimum.

Who's to say it won't happen tonight if pics can still be posted. Just as likely to be a group of people, as one person.

Yes, but in the meantime posters need to know what they can do if it happens again, and what might be illegal for them to do. I think it's fair to say MN have a duty to protect us all there?

I saw them too. But realistically, what support can she offer that will help? Theyll be seared into my brain forever.

This isn't a security breach though, it's a criminal act.

It is not possible to have measures that are 100% effective and posting what measures are in place gives the trolls/spammers something concrete to work on.

has she really just called serious criminal offences showing images of real life children being sexually abused trolling?! Unbelievable.

Trolling? Jesus.

And the crime of hosting them! That’s beyond minimising and literally disgusting.

Yes, but saying, for example, you are going to use AI to filter things out or disable all images, would not help the trolls at all, would it?

Exactly. She has no business running a website forum for mothers. Absolutely sick.

Therapy…..

Other posters are calling it trolling too! I hope none of you work in safeguarding.

I think it's quite clear than MN are not taking this at all seriously enough, and are more concerned about protecting their bottom line than their users and the victims of CSA, so I'm out.

As the day goes on I'm more convinced that this has been a deliberate attack and is still going on.