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.

Have been warily lurking tonight, I am often looking at Mumsnet and posting late at night As far as I can gather I was close to seeing the images, by sheer luck of me clicking off to follow the "sensational story" and one eye on a sitcom I possibly could have seen them. I wonder how many users are online into the early hours that makes it ok to allow these images "up" for so long global timelines? 1, 2 or 200...2000?

My thoughts go to all of you who did see them and also, to anyone who was trying to do the right thing to report and those who were trying to hide it, resolve it.

I have actually tried to tag Mumsnet ane can't headquarters and I cannot remove my tags below which I am not happy about.

My words were do more for your community and at least protect us! I have first hand witnessed moderators clear flooding of threads of abusive language a few years ago late into the night. To think that you rely on unpaid volunteers is a joke. To think that you allowed these images to persist on a site which is generating £2m of profit is a joke.

By the way, the answer to how many users should see those images is of course zero! And any self respecting social media platform would have measures in place or if not at least more than a trite we have turned off photos on 2 of our channels.

Coupled with literally censored control with deleting multiple threads (I personally only witnessed one which brought this to my attention) I do wonder what you are doing in terms of damage control, it is just not right.

I have been a long time lurker on this platform and became brave enough to share advice and have received a huge amount in return. I personally think this has been very badly communicated from you (Mumsnet).

@TwigletsAndRadishes!
@mnhq

Yeah I couldn't sleep last night and narrowly avoided one. Really feel for the people who viewed by mistake and NW.

It caused quite the commotion and I really hope police have been contacted already.

Most nights like tonight I can’t sleep. Last night thank god I dud. I usually scroll through threads. Wary of doing so tonight apart from the ones I’m usually on.

Why are people making out the images were worse than they were?

Sorry but I've seen far worse on Instagram and Twitter. I've seen children shot, crawling away from bomb sites without their limbs, and other extremely horrific and graphic stuff from the genocide in Gaza.

The images on the relationships post were cat C. There was possibly one Cat B image in the second comment from the sick poster but I closed the post quickly so didn't look at them properly. I was disturbed by them for a minute, but they were not traumatic (possibly because I've become used to seeing much worse stuff on Twitter and Instagram). The comments on here seem so dramatic. Mumsnet isn't any less safe than other sites - and they'll hopefully change things so if a post is reported overnight, it'll get hidden until a moderator can look into it. That's a good solution to this.

Didn’t look at it properly but can confidently categorise them - with what experience?

@Fizzywizzy2 I think the point is that people were expecting to read something else and got a fright.

It's mainly a site for parents, after all, not indecent child images.

Absolutely, but the internet isn't a safe place. Mumsnet has responded and taken action. What more do people want them to do?

🤷‍♀️ I didn't see them but it was enough to alarm people

Caught up and have seen they did turn off image sharing but 15hrs after the crime started.

Fizzywizzy you won’t have seen every image unless you actively went looking for them even after seeing one so how can you state their content so confidently?

As to what else HQ could say for one thing, given they had a team of lawyers with them, they could have given information on the legal position of users who had shared links to csa on request and to those who accessed the images that are now on their hard drive.

It would also have cost them nothing to signpost towards support charities who could be contacted given the number of posters saying how distressed they were by having seen the images.

They could have avoided minimising the seriousness of the criminal activity last night and csa in general by not calling it trolling.

100% this

For a site this big which generates a huge income, MN has a scarily laissez faire attitude to its users and wider responsibilities.

The CSA images are next level of awfulness but Many people felt the same with previous serious data breaches.

It feels like they're happy to generate the money of a huge scale site, but in terms of accountability, they act like they're still just a couple of mums sat round the kitchen table.

This is really shocking and unacceptable

I thought exactly the same.

The only criminal here is the sick individual that posted the photos. Why do we always deflect blame?

I am sure Mumsnet learned a lot from last nights events and changes will be made.

I appreciate that the internet is not safe etc etc, and Mumsnet have confirmed they’ve reported to the police, but as far as I can see (and it’s hard to keep track!) volunteers on Sunday night were asking posters who’d seen the images to forward / repost on to them. Isn’t that a crime (reposting / forwarding an indecent image is making an indecent image in the legislation). I can’t see that MNHQ have done a statement on why / how the policy / training to volunteers included something that was potentially a crime or who those who did should contact. The use of volunteers isn’t in itself an issue (I believe this is common on forums) but not training or supporting them in the context of exactly the risks they are there to deal with is not good at all. Sorry - trying to catch up - perhaps MN have addressed this?

*The only criminal here is the sick individual that posted the photos. Why do we always deflect blame?

I am sure Mumsnet learned a lot from last nights events and changes will be made.*

And that is precisely the sort of reaction a few posters had with previous major incidents. I recall the massive data breach about 10 years ago when thousands of posters personal details were publicised. The incident made headlines in the national newspapers - it's was serious stuff.

Yet the instinctive response from MNHQ was to minimise it - 'oops, sorry, we've made a little mistake' - and really worryingly, a few posters facilitated this with comments like 'don't worry', 'we know you're doing your best' ...

The owners and MNHQ have responsibilities. They're happy to rake in the hundreds of thousands of pounds yet seem to play the 'oops we're just a little group of mummys trying our best' card when something goes massively wrong.

This is big business. There should be accountability. Obviously we all hope the perpetrator is identified and criminal charges are brought too, but MN also has to be held to account

Arrogance? Absolutely not. And no, I am not here for the drama. This is really serious. I'm not sure why expecting some sort of apology or at least more than what was written in MNHQ's first response is arrogant or rude. I get they may have legal reasons for the wording but usually they would say that they can't say more for whatever reason. And the fact the response took 12 hours is unacceptable. MNHQ isn't some blog it's a fairly large business.

I think this is projection, actually.

Yes I well remember that data breach. The inadequacies and flippant disregard for users (who are actually the business product ie content creators and consumers and target for ads) has been apparent for a really long time.

The knee jerk fan girl esque responses become more ridiculous as time and further events unfold that really should make them rethink their unwavering assurance that the management obviously know what they’re doing and really care about everyone.

Im not sticking the boot in at individuals I’m talking about serious failures in policy and management at a multi million pound business not investing adequately in ensuring the safety of their users or their data.