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.

I'm shocked by MN's response. I hope the media do pick this up because what else will make MN take this seriously?

@CaroIus that’s why I left the last time, posts deleted that politely challenged. It’s like Deja vu.

There seemed to be more mnet sympathisers back then.

Why the heck you’d give your time free I don’t know … and I say that as a Samaritan volunteer who does night shifts on a rota.

The corporate that is mnet is hardly altruistic.

@MNHQ @JustineMumsnet could the crime number not be shared? So that those who encountered it last night can get in touch with the appropriate authorities to enable them to be connected to support?

I am seriously hoping that MN have taken some steps to prevent this, even if they’re not talking about it here

I am really sorry the Nightwatchers and everyone else who viewed them had to see such vile, criminal images and hope they are OK.

I'm not very tech and therefore don't know what the long term solutions could be around vetting images etc, but I know when the Nightwatch was started in 2014, it was not seen by many as an adequate overnight mod system and last night has clearly proved that. It was a situation sadly waiting to happen. It isn't a reflection on them at all and they undoubtedly did their best, but it's not right or fair to expect them to cope with that. I was lucky enough not to see them, but I know child protection police officers and even with careful selection and training, they still feel the effects.

As has been pointed out repeatedly, MN is a multi million pound business with a huge international userbase and there should as a bare minimum be paid overnight modding with full access to all that the daytime team has, even enhanced "powers" as overnight may be quieter on the boards but UK night is when such attacks happen.

I truly hope some emergency measures such as suspending image posting can start immediately and there is a move to formal overnight moderation straight away. Anything else is not OK, IMO.

You do not need a crime number to get support from victim support www.victimsupport.org.uk/help-and-support/get-help/

Having thousands of mumsnetters call up would just tie up resources.

@TheGrimSqueakersFlea the people who encountered these images last night need to be able to report it. A crime number would be useful, even if it was just shared to those who reported.

So they could have been taken down very quickly but there was no mechanism for the poster to get blocked once the first had been detected ?

The images were not taken down quickly.

Agree with this. We don't have to be here. Not whilst there is this going on - and not at all if we choose. Users have a duty of care to themselves and it's their choice not to but they accept the risk then, a known risk.

I don't see what ranting and railing is going to achieve? The posts here are so aggressive but to what objective?

Just a reminder that Mumsnet:

Had a turnover of £7 million+ last year

Had an operating profit of £2 million+ last year

Reported having 63 employees last year.

This is not a case of poor old Justine and the mods being busy running around dealing with everything today so we should feel grateful they’ve thrown their users any scraps of information.

This is a multi million pound business utterly failing to protect their users and volunteers; because having to pay moderators overnight or pay for specialist software may cut into their (again, £2m+) profit margins.

They have enough money to be able to hire in experts to manage this situation. The fact that it took hours to slap up a (poor) statement from the CEO, and that no action appears to have been taken to ban image posting (which should be a simple change for a competent tech team or consultant); is piss poor management from a Company this size.

Isn't it the police themselves who will give a crime number? Not mumsnet surely?

@LyingWitchInTheWardrobe which MN can then supply. They will have it.

Hi all,
We've now disabled image posting from the site and are working on removing it from the Apps. We're also looking at some longer term AI alternatives to prevent recognise harmful content prior to being posted but they'll most likely take a few days to implement. Thanks.

The posts went up over what seems to have been a 5 hr period and taken down over that same time period

It's not clear than any was actually up for the full 5 hrs.

After one had been detected there should have been MUCH firmer action but there seems to be a lot of assertions and statements that may not be strictly accurate being bandied about

I suspect the reason they haven’t suspended the ability to post photos is that they will then have to inform the millions of users who are currently unaware of what happened last night of the situation, and they’re trying to keep it as quiet as possible. Hence the deletion of all the other posts on it, too.

This really should have been done straight away until better safeguards are in place. As a minimum.
I am glad (mainly for whoever is on Nightwatch tonight) that is now in place though.

Or, knowing all that (which we do already), users still choose to post. So not that disgusted with it all then? It's not about 'poor Justine', it's about take a bit of personal responsibility for one's own wellbeing.

I can foresee an awful lot of members who didn't see any images at all, reporting away with those who did.

But just report yourself via your local constabulary or CEOP. They will link it themselves.

X post!

I do agree that none of us have to be here. I’m never here at that time of night anyway, so I’m not deregging yet.
BUT without a wider awareness of the potential for this to happen again there are 1,000s of active users who don’t know about it and so can’t take the decision to step away. They are owed consideration and I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a pop up of some sort to be put up ‘X happened, here is who to report it to without directly sharing the images and we currently can’t state that all risk has been eradicated’. Let people decide for themselves.

Exactly. The hand-wringing and helplessness of supposedly competent women is worrying.

And yet when certain groups have complained about Mumsnet action is taken pretty swiftly if advertising revenue is threatened
Advertisers won’t like the site being used for posting of illegal images, surely.