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.

Image OF my garden. Struggling to type these days!

I don’t understand how you expect people to take personal responsibility in this matter?

You might have happened upon a thread warning about the images and switched off - another user may have happened upon the thread with the images. Pure luck as to what you clicked on first.

There is no excuse for any site turning over millions, and seeing £2m+ profit to be relying on ‘volunteers’ in any capacity.

Anyone doing essential work for a business should be paid NMW or above - that is the law.

Perhaps MNHQ doesn’t see night moderating as an essential part of their business - which leads us to situations like this.

And if the mod decided that they weren’t qualified or suitably renumerated to want to deal with such images - what then? MNHQ would have no recourse to reprimand a volunteer.

It all smacks of a failure to protect users, even if you leave aside the clear moral and legal issues with using unpaid labour to prop up what must be the most profitable part of the site.

I expect the guillotine knitters who are disgusted with Justine and her staff will make up more of the numbers.

Don't get me wrong, I've been against volunteer mods since day one, and what happened last night in terms of being able to get rid of the images immediately was an absolute shit show.

But it's done now and it's a case of 'watch this space' with regards to any permanent changes that may be made.

I agree with a PP who said it seems like some people are after Justine's blood.

If there are adequate safeguards in place, then they won’t be able to succeed as they have thus far been able to. Hiding it away doesn’t make these sickos go away. MN is already well known to the likes of MRA. Having it splashed all over the media makes it impossible for this shit show to be swept under the carpet and far less likely for it to happen again, because MNHQ will have to take it seriously enough to throw enough resources (aka £££ at it), which they have hitherto not been willing to do. They’d rather save their money and pull the mods overnight and replace them with volunteers, and therefore put users in the situation of seeing Category A CSA images, ffs.

And no, I’m not part of a supposed ongoing attack to bring down MN. I don’t want MN gone. I want MN safe and held accountable. I want MN to continue being a place where a mostly female user base can come together and share whatever serious or silly shit we want to. Right now that has been seriously threatened and the response has been incredibly lacking.

Are you using the app?

Justine said they're still working on that.

I'm on a laptop and the function has been removed from desktop.

This 👆🏼

people unaffected saying we are guillotine knitters, child sexual abuse is one off the worst crimes known to man. Justine put profit over site safety. No one who saw the images can unsee them, and it’s her fault for putting £££ over safety. Unpaid mods is an absolute joke. I had no idea there was even the night watch, and I doubt many did, If I’d been logged in I would have reported it using the button, I wouldn’t have known that no one was manning the site and needed to what, alert a thread?

I saw images at 3.30am and reported - but i didn't realise i needed to tag nightwatch. Devastating to see them. Something that can't be unseen - that people do this to children is incomprehensible. Would not want to lose mumsnet though - they need to sort.

Image sharing isn't the only method of sharing vile, obscene content,

But it is more visceral when you see it, so I'm glad they've disabled that.

Context:
As a disabled, widowed and therefore lone parent, who did indeed find out who her friends were when she needed them (ie: none), I have an awful lot of spare time on my hands; During which I can’t really do much due to my disability. As a natural consequence of this, Mumsnet has been my absolute social lifeline for the past however long. My only adult interaction for days, sometimes over a week during school holidays. Mumsnet or the occasional call from my elderly mum is often my lot, adult wise.

However, this incident has genuinely shaken me & entirely changed my view of this forum. I'm quite ridiculously sensitive so had I stumbled upon one of these images, I'd have been a mess for a considerable period of time.
Anyway my point is that despite MN meaning so much to me and often being my only source of laughter and practice for my dwindling social skills, I absolutely will give it up entirely if the risk of this happening again, is not mitigated correctly.

My thoughts are with those poor souls in the images (although fingers crossed they were 100% AI, but still....) and with those who had to see it. I know you'll never forget what you saw.

I think the Night Watch mods should have access to threads that are reported using the report button. Why on earth wouldn't they? MN are using them for free, the least they can do is give them the tools to do their job.

people unaffected saying we are guillotine knitters, child sexual abuse is one off the worst crimes known to man.

Well yes, that goes without saying.

However, plenty of those banging on about how awfully Justine and her staff have handled this and how awful Mumsnet is now, will undoubtedly be glued to MN for the next few days at least.

I don't really think there's anything that hasn't been said over and over again already, and HQ aren't going to say any more until they have something concrete to tell us.

Quite!

either it’s essential, so pay someone, or it’s not needed at all, running off volunteers is shit, especially for a website that supposedly champions women, and women in the workplace etc

@CantStopBuyingSeeds Mercifully I didn't see the illegal child SA cruelty abuse images -But once saw another{Not child, thank Goodness, but it shows the level of spite men {and it's almost always men who post these things} have.

Reddit so say has troll sites for Mumsnet and other sites.

What is your point exactly? That if you’ve been badly affected by this but value MN as a community, that ‘being glued’ (aka invested) in what the outcome of this will be is…what, exactly? You seem to be alluding to something untoward about a very natural reaction. Why not spell out what it is you’re trying to say?

I can’t believe there hasn’t been a site message out to all users about it

I was extremely lucky....I came onto mumsnet shortly after 4:30 am and all the images were gone.

I can't post images either, {Good news} and couldn't on my phone either. 👍

The ''App'' so say is taking longer to disable image posting.

If you were a night watch volunteer would you be logging in tonight? I wouldn't be.

I think I've made it perfectly clear what I'm saying but I'll give it one more go just for you 😳

If people don't like Mumsnet or those who run it for any reason, they'd be better off logging out either temporarily or permanently.

Clearer?

I missed it as well, thank goodness.. But have seen one other image that was posted at night.
A niche interest {pathetic} image designed to ''shock''.
Which is clearly what the illegal CSA has been surely been designed to do.

As mud.

You completely misunderstand the motivations of those criticising what has led up to, and followed, this horrifying situation.

Your poor comprehension skills aren't my problem I'm afraid.

If those who hate the way this site is run and the way the site is now compared to the past, they're free to waste their time continuing to use it anyway.

So our painful exchange here is pretty moot anyway.

What nonsense.

Mumsnet makes its money from its users - we are the product. We use it on the understanding that they provide the framework of a large community of (mostly) women that can provide entertainment, support, debate etc.

Tacit in this agreement is that the framework they provide is safe - they keep our anonymity and enforce community rules about the kinds of post that are tolerated.

They broke that agreement when they failed to remove illegal and hugely distressing content for an unacceptably long time - because they do not have appropriate safeguarding procedures in place.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with people holding MNHQ to account, and suggesting otherwise smacks of ‘pick me’ mentality.