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.

There is one very simple action they could take with minimal effort that would guarantee it didn't happen again, disabled the uploading of photos for all users.

Absolutely spot on.
The creeps who post CSA to a parent’s site know what they are up to.

Do we even NEED images?

I really feel for those who saw images like that.

The old Channel 4 forums were regularly targeted by trolls overnight so they did the sensible thing and closed them at midnight every night until the next morning when the mods were on duty. Wouldn't that be the easiest solution here, at least temporarily while something better is put in place?

Disable everyone’s ability to post images.

Maybe links too .

It might be worth knowing that there are immediate things you can lawfully do if you come across this situation again.

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

The Internet Watch Foundation has a report page. You can copy and paste the URL of the thread into the report. You must not copy or attempt to provide the image.

You can also contact 101 and give them the URL.

I ran training courses for several years around the legalities of having volunteers. I do hope all the nightwatch have standard role descriptions, volunteer policy and procedure documentation, and all of the other legal items that are needed?

It's not just putting chatty people in charity shops anymore, you know. Volenteer use is a serious business

@JustineMumsnet

Pretty much all the images were removed within an hour of posting

That’s too long a time to have as your yardstick when it’s CSA we’re talking about. This isn’t irritating trolling. This is disgusting, damaging and ILLEGAL.

How many thousands of users would have seen that post in an hour?

Definitely not fast enough.

Doesn't matter If its a free to use platform. The owners of the site have a legal obligation to prevent illegal material being shared on the site. It's clear that they are failing in that regard. The nightwatch system is not enough and I'm sure to satisfy their legal obligations they have to show that they've taken every step possible to stop the sharing of such material. Their response last night was abysmal and their statements today definitely fall short of the mark. They may be able to fob us off but the authorities will be a different matter.

No, “pretty much all” of the images were not deleted within an hour.

The first one was posted at about 11.10pm, the FIFTEENTH image was removed at about 4am.

I don’t know that’s worse here- the blatant misinformation, or the patronising tone.

People are rightfully angry and upset.

Dear Lord, really?? Wow that’s appalling!
I thankfully didn’t see any of them and was only aware this morning.

Did all images land at the same time ?

No they were across several threads over a four hour period.

There is no doubt that what happened is beyond sickening and I can understand the massive trauma it has caused, but it is unrealistic to expect MN to tell you what steps they are taking to prevent it happening again. The information would be here for everyone to read, including whoever posted the images.
We have to trust that steps have been taken and the police are involved. For anyone worried about a repeat, there is always the option of logging out

Everyone should be worried about a repeat. Those who didn’t see them last night sadly might not be so lucky tonight, or tomorrow night.
Like a PP, I’m not easily shockable and I didn’t realise how much seeing an image like that would affect me. I really, really hope no one else is subjected to something like that, and a simple measure like temporarily disabling the ability to post photos could prevent it.

For anyone worried about a repeat, there is always the option of logging out

And for those users unaware of the situation…?

Thank you @Lougle .

I’m not sure why MNHQ couldn’t advise that, but at least someone has!
There are some pretty rude replies to Mods and Justine, but it’s child sexual abuse we are talking about here and the mood seems to be to downplay it, which seems wrong. I can totally understand why people are getting frustrated.Perhaps if the outside agencies who are equipped to deal with crimes of this nature are the first port of call to report to then more robust strategies might be brought in. Night Watch are for spammers and common or garden trolls. I hope they all down tools tonight and for the foreseeable future if they are expected to view images such as these. Unacceptable, even for a forum where the ‘payment’ is your eyes on ads.

@ThatFluentTiger

The images were definitely still up about 435am as that's when I came across them. Not much after 4 but still there way after first ones posted

And this, of course. Unless they’ve read this thread, they’ll have no idea of the issue.

@romdowa Taking down illegal materials from the site will count as not hosting them. That's how the big social media platforms manage it (and they often have to respond to user complaints), the bar isn't actually has high as pre-empting them.

The ease of random trolls being able to find and weaponise images of CSA is a real scandal of the internet. That filth used to be hard to find, now they can distribute it like a type of online terrorism. The Online Safety bill doesn't go far enough IMO.

Each individual post might have been removed but I reported the first one I saw at 11.05, then again at 11.09 when it was still up. According to posters on this thread posts were still getting through until 4.30.

Poor Night Watch having to deal with that.

As I see it there were a number of problems last night.
Firstly most people quite rightly assumed that reporting the post would be enough. Very few people knew that the reports don’t get seen until the morning. I posted on night watch which drew their attention to it. It should be that night watch get the reports, or when you send a report it pops up, or a certain number of reports hides the post.

The second problem was the night watch were powerless. They were unable to do anything other than firefight. They should have been able to contact HQ to get the whole site shut down in such extreme situations.

I don't know how it works behind the scenes but if we can't post a link in the Night Watch sub and hitting report does nothing, how long will it take for a mod to find the offensive post if we just tell them the name of the thread ?