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 agree that having volunteers rather than paid staff is very exploitative and a very bad look for a millionaire owner.

maybe people should be prevented from posting images until they have made a certain amount of posts over a certain time period? So one month and 50 post threshold? Both have to be reached?

I don't know what they have in place but they're defined not immune to it. These guys put stuff on all sorts of platforms.
I think however that it is very likely that this was a targeted attack specifically on MN as a site that is predominantly female and provides support yo women facing DV and other abuse.
While I agree that MN has to urgently look at their moderation, it wouldn't surprise me if there is a second wave attack coming in now to try get everyone to blame MN for it. We should keep that in mind.
Hopefully, they'll not have covered their tracks as easily as they hoped and there's very long prison sentences incoming.

despite trawling MNs in the early hours because i'm unwell & can't sleep I thankfully didn't see the photos. Thanks to those that reported & got them removed. I had no idea moderators were volunteers! That seems very archaic & frankly tight with such a huge money making platform.

Surely someone with adequate training has to at least be on call 24/7 for a site this large? And there has to be some kind of protocol emergency be action on cyber crime?

The problem is that when you screenshot images of CSAM, even with the intent of taking them to the police, you are committing a crime yourself.

Not enough people know that.

I narrowly missed the images last night, my daughter was teething and I came on mumsnet just after 4 pm.

You'd think, wouldn't you? I guess it's one of those things that you only realise you really need on the very day that you REALLY need it. Hindsight and all that, but for a site this large and this well established there are questions to answer.

Things will have to be different from now on.

Can I please ask, were these images under some innocuous, trivial title? (I don't want to know what, thankyou).
Because if so, I won't risk using MN ever again.
Which is so bloody sad as I rely on this place sometimes, as many do.
And I'm so very sorry for all those who saw this .

Yes hence you have to have someone on call who does know these things and the legal requirements and who has the ability and authority to shut the site down.

I don’t know so much. Surely there are legal requirements rather than leaving it to massive online entities to figure it out after the horse has bolted?

There's clearly been no training whatsoever for the volunteers, which is appalling. I used to work for a moderation company and any 'never event' like CSA, terrorism, suicide threats etc had to be immediately escalated to management BUT we were not even allowed to send the higher up the links to the CSA, as it's a crime.

They took it very seriously, because it is serious. The company I worked for had a guarantee in place that the entire incident would be dealt with (including reporting to police if applicable) within 15 minutes. A company the size of MN shouldn't just be allowed to cheap out on moderation.

Thank you @oneofmeiscutebuttwothough and @MimmyMoo

I hadn’t realised, that is indeed a failure of training/foresight, as is the lack of some kind of filter in the first place.

I guess it was an unforeseen risk- though lack of overnight protection has been raised many times before.

The fact they haven’t even posted now when god knows how many were exposed to the images, including volunteers, is telling me a lot. For some people in particular this will have been seriously damaging.

There were two threads created by genuine posters which the perpetrator chose to post very explicit CSA images on. And when I say 'child' in the CSA, I do mean child. We are not talking 15 year olds here.

Then another thread created in a different poster name I believe, which the title led you to believe was about Kanye West and Bianca Thingy, but when you opened the thread it wasn't about them at all.

Luckily I have no interest in that daft and pointless pair, so I didn't open that thread but I did see one of the others. I wish I hadn't.

I’m afraid they were. Normal threads were spammed.

However- you can come across things on the internet. I don’t think you should feel particularly at risk- but wait and see what MN do/say to reassure us this can’t happen again

When I think about my work and the weight given to things like corporate social responsibility, I wonder who is advising Justine. Where’s the demonstration of good ethics? Bagging millions a year with dividends and exploiting women overnight as volunteers.

It shouldn’t be an unseen risk @myplace , this is an internet forum. I’d expect one of my graduate trainees to come up with that in a basic risk assessment for this business.

I agree it's appalling. The volunteers seem to have been left with very few options, and I can't imagine how they're feeling after seeing such horrific images.

I'm sure MNHQ will be along soon to try and defend their stinginess, but there's absolutely no excuse for a site this large and profitable to exploit volunteers.

Nightwatch have not reported it to the police as apparently that would be a matter for HQ to handle.

The mind boggles that MN still uses unpaid labour considering the scope of their reach and their profits.

In no way an unforeseen risk but a very real and known one that requires both prevention and a very rigorous preplanned response protocol with very clearly delegated responsibility.

Anyone who saw this happen at the time, please report it to police.

I'd happily apply for a "night watch" job as it'll be daytime in my corner of the world. It does sound like there needs a better use of AI to detect and hide (or even not allow to load up) inappropriate imagery

We’ll do it in the morning clearly isn’t a defensible policy for reporting csa.

I expect the news will pick this up soon surely, which perhaps needs to happen to ensure the right action is taken by MN

MN let all sorts of pervs post in the sex topic. It's no wonder some sick bastards think it's okay to post these sort of images on MN.

Omg. Last thing I would need would be to see something like this. I've been here nine years but I won't be returning, I can't take that risk. MH pretty fragile as it is right now.

Jesus H. I am glad I missed that.

Yes absolutely mn should employ someone to monitor the site overnight. Edit - uk overnight.

They made what was it? Over 2 million profit in 2023? Unless I'm reading this wrong.

They can afford to pay someone to monitor the boards 24/7