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 entities posting the images could be based anywhere in the world.

I think they know MN cares more about its profits than the users. I dread tonight.

Who the hell calls owning and distributing photos of children being sexually abused trolling? Do they go on the troll register? Omg that’s made me so outraged.

And what of the women who post in the night cos that's when it's safest or they are the saddest or most desperate. It has to be 24hrs, it just has to be.

Trolling?! These were illegal images....

I don't know because I'm not someone who knows how to do these things. I do know that not saying it definitely isn't going to help though.

It's a pretty horrible thing to be faced with, I agree. Imagine what it's like for the police officers who work to identify the victims of online CSA - they have to view those materials all day, every day to find clues for when and where it's happened. And they have to classify the materials so when prosecutions are taken forward, the victims and jurors don't have to have the actual images shown in court. They can just be told the numbers of images at different levels of severity.

The sick bastard to decided to find and share this material on MN needs to be prosecuted. It was a very calculated attack.

Are you suggesting posters in this thread, who are rightly sickened by MN’s response, are ‘secret agents’ out to bring down MN?

I’d just like @JustineMumsnet to make it clear to posters what they should do when it happens again. Now they know how easy it was, and that there are no systems in place to stop it, it will happen again.

The point is that they were posted by trolls though isn't it? So, trolling using illegal images.

I think the word ‘criminals’ is more appropriate than ‘trolls’ to be honest.

I don't know what support MN can give posters who saw the images.
And maybe MN are wary of opening themselves up to claims that will incur costs to them.
But this
You'll understand that we're not going to detail every troll countering measure here. That would be foolish I think.
shows the true measure of how little they can be bothered to engage.
But of course , there's no reason for them to do so.
We've all freely decided to be on MN . We don't pay to do so.
We have no contract with MN , and I'm sure that , despite their posturing, we all know that they are a big business not a friendly bunch of mums running the site out of the goodness of their hearts.

No. They were criminals. They are sex offenders committing a sex offence.

Sorry I should have clarified @Caerulea - I might overnight tonight (and until suitable technical and procedural safeguards are place), not for this to be a permanent change to the way the site works.

Absolutely. Seeing 'trolls' being used in this context is practically making me scream with fury and frustration.

I think perhaps the wording was suggested by lawyers?

You'll understand that we're not asking you to detail every troll countering measure here.

We're not as foolish as your patronising response suggests you believe.

How about an assurance that tonight there will be a proper paid member of staff on duty all night who is able to see and deal with reports that are made?

The issue is, it has deeply traumatised all that have seen these heartbreaking images. There has been zero duty of care, presumably either not caring about those affected or worried about a lawsuit.

But for me, I’m now so angry about their lack of support I’m going to pursue suing them and have also contacted media outlets.

Nobody is expecting you to give confidential information regarding complex technical procedures. What people would like to know is:

Have measures been implemented to prevent these type of images being shared on the site? If not why are any images being allowed to be added at the moment, if these type of images could be posted at any point?

Will there be anybody moderating the site at night who will be able to delete threads and if necessary, get the site temporarily shut down if something this serious occurs again? Because there should be.

Will people pressing the report button at night actually lead to anyone receiving the report before morning? If not don't you think this is a major safety concern?

Do you think that it's really appropriate to refer to someone posting CSA abuse images on your site as a troll, this is serious criminal behaviour.

I've probably missed a few, but I'm sure lots of people would like those questions answered.

Serious sexual offences were committed last night. Literally offences that can result in prison sentences and life on the sex offenders register.

The site essentially facilitated that crime continuing and the victims being further exposed by not having an adequate response protocol in place.

Please don’t minimise the seriousness of the incident or the damage done to victims whose images are publicly exhibited on a mainstream website.

On a basis of 'guilty until proven innocent' perhaps? Yes, I can see that might be possible, in which case I would suggest sexual deviant. 'Troll' is completely unacceptable and offensive in this situation.

Agree. This was more than trolling.

God don’t give them a defence for taking the thread down. The lawyer’s probably on work experience too.

Yes, I thought about them too. I am 'unshockable' but was surprised by the strength of my reaction to the pictures. I kept re-seeing a couple of them, a standard shock response. People whose actual, paid jobs involve looking at illegal images get specialised training and counselling; expecting volunteers to cope is close to abuse.

I hope and trust MN has done something to support the volunteers on duty last night - but systems should already have been in place to prevent that kind of exposure.

I can’t believe you thought that contacting the media would help. Someone posted those horrible images to attack MN and the women using the site. All media attention will do is attract more of these vile people to MN. You’re making MN less safe. I also can’t believe you’re throwing around comments about lawsuits. What good would that do? The police are already involved.