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 amazed its not in the news. Amount daily mail picks up threads from here and yet this isnt on the news.

It was obviously unpleasant for those who saw the images but I'm not sure if it is such a big story tbh. People post offensive stuff online all the time, the images were taken down and procedures are now in place to prevent it happening again.

They do not want to attact other criminal activity to this site - they are protecting us(hopefully).

That's somewhat naive.

Do you think a website of this scale is really protecting its users by merely having volunteers who don't have the full technical competence to actually moderate the site properly?

From what I have read MN made approx £8m profit last year. I think MN is protecting profits over its members tbh.

I absolutely understand why no more details will be forthcoming about the measures being taken, and fully agree with that.

However, from seeing the flurries of questioning around the boards, it is clear that MN need to do two things. Firstly, pin somewhere a brief, factual statement about what happened, so posters know and can make an informed decision about how or if they use the site from now on.

And secondly, pin a clear post about how to report posts out of hours, to ensure they receive immediate attention. It’s clear a lot of users have no idea that reports aren’t seen overnight, and don’t know about the existence of Night Watch, so it’s imperative that all users have this information - preferably with clear instructions of how to engage with NW without themselves committing offences of distribution.

Well yes that would be the most logical thing to do to show some acknowledgement of the matter and consideration for its users. That this is not forthcoming is pretty piss poor.

Really shows the lack of professionalism and any sense of public accountability here. I'm very disappointed in MNHQ.

You could be reading a thread anywhere on the internet, looking at any sort of site and this could happen. It isn't safe, it's happened before and it will happen again.

This is a two stage issue though, isn't it? Posters have been exposed to images, there's nothing that can be done to erase that.. What is it exactly that you expect anyone to do about that? The only thing to be done is not expose yourself further to that site until it's secured. Mumsnet are working on the issue (they've said so) and some posters here are clamouring to know what is being done, as if we're going to be updated in real time. That isn't going to happen.

I'm sick of reading that posters are 'protecting mumsnet' if they don't follow the current party line of angry shouting about 'what's to be done?!'. Nobody is 'blaming users', none of us has control of this and shouting about it isn't going to get it done either.

Will you think about paying for more staff to be on call through the night? This would be easy to implement if you recruit online staff in a different time zone no? Why is it relying on “volunteers”?

Oh, pardon me. I though people cared about children here.

I don't think you're comprehending just how much control you have over seeing those images...

I'm still wondering what you intended users to do who were exposed to those images on MN? Travel back in time and don't click on any MN threads?

It is a nonsensical comment.

I was fortunate enough not to see any of the images. I understand how traumatising it must have been for those who did. I also understand the concerns about MNHQ's procedures and systems in terms of preventing this sort of thing from happening. But surely the priority is for the matter to be dealt with by police so that the victims can be identified and helped, and perpetrators prosecuted. It's the children in the images who need to be uppermost in our thoughts. Preventing us from seeing images doesn't stop the crime itself.

If this incident does lead to children being removed from an unsafe situation, and a prosecution and imprisonment of offenders, then some good will have come from it.

At this stage it isn't clear if it was real children or AI images

Why does everything have to be compared to Gaza? Ffs have a day off.

I can see what you're about and I'm not engaging with it. Carry on stirring as you like. Pathetic but as expected.

I think it's got something to do with the fact that mumsnet swiftly removed it from trending to site stuff.

Mumsnet has a vested interest in this NOT appearing in the press.

Both highly illegal.

@moonsunandstars trending isn't a section in the forum, it's just a list of popular threads. This thread was started in site stuff and happened to be 'trending' at the same time.

Thanks, I didn’t know that.

What the fuck did I get deleted for?!

Interested to know what I have said here that needed a delete

Yes both illegal and horrible

but the "
Pity the childen "
Comments are premature - sorry should have made that clearer

Even some of the allegedly worst sites on the internet, such as 4Chan and Kiwifarms have moderation, so I can't imagine what kind of sites would not. I doubt they are sites that a lot of Mumsnetters would go on.

Anyway, this is about Mumsnet, a large, well-known, profitable site. The kind of site users would absolutely and rightly expect to have safety measures in place.

But that's the problem.....AI generated images of children often use images of real children as a source and alter innocent images. So there are real victims.

Also, AI generated images feed the market and the supply and demand. Hence, more real children will be abused.

Oh I am not being blasé about the problems of AI

I doubt however that the images posted here will trigger people to abuse children

IF ( we don't know ) they were AI then no children were harmed by making them - that's all

They are hopefully more likely to trigger women to taking AI problems a lot more seriously and hopefully lead to positive change because relying on men won't see enough sone

This is vile.

These AI images use real photos to make them. No children were abused physically, but they were still harmed.

This is such a vile way to minimise what happened.