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.

No, you can't see what I'm "about". And I am not "stirring", I am calling you out. Why are you even on this thread posting zillions of times if this is all such a bloody non-event to you?

What on earth are you on about.

Can you point to the child directly harmed by an AI image?

No

Yes the proliferation of such images will be harmful to future childen unless it in fact acts as a trigger to get these images stopped

But it's rather nasty of you to think that the images posted here will trigger mothers to abuse childen
( still don't know if they are AI or not )

I never said that they will trigger women to abuse their children.

But the children who have their pictures used in AI images are victims too.

I cannot believe how many people on here seek to minimise what has happened and act as if it's not really that big a problem, because they may be AI?!

@towelsandsheets the CSA images posted here will just encourage more paedophiles to read mums here talking about toileting and similar issues

I have no problem with MN keeping this out of the media if they can. The more publicity something like this gets, the more people are tempted to do the same thing. The perpetrator was looking for attention, and there are lots of others out there who would enjoy doing the same, if they saw that it would get them media attention, too.

Let's just let HQ focus on dealing with this and stop ranting on about needing to know every little detail. It's ridiculous that people were expecting to be told what they were going to do, pretty much as soon as the office opened. This is going to take detailed thought and decision making rather than a knee jerk response. That posting images is blocked is a basic temporary measure. We just have to bide our time on the rest.

I disagree strongly. MNHQ have not taken security and safety seriously for a very long time. Look at the multiple breaches of personal data.
This being in the media might pressurise them to change how they operate

@PipMumsnet would it not be an idea to change the title of this thread so that people know what it's actually about? Also it's nearly 1000 posts so what happens then?

@JaneJeffer I suspect MNHQ do not want people to know what this thread is about

Indeed @JoyousGreyOrca

Update from MNHQ addressing the recent images posted on the site | Mumsnet

Generative AI is trained on real images and written materials.

Anyone thinking AI CSA images have no victims is very foolish or disingenuous.

Mainstream generative AI engines have filters that prevent CSA imagery being created - the AI engines that allow it are absolutely scraping real CSA imagery and encouraging users to supply CSA to train them.

Absolutely nobody has described any of the images in what could possibly be described as 'detail' and the only reason anyone described them in the most general terms was precisely because others were minimising them.

From one of the many closed threads:

But they should have the expertise and advice to address all this. The ‘oh no, it’s just us Mums round our kitchen table trying to deal with such complicated techy-wechy stuff’ won’t suffice.

This is exactly the problem. MNHQ is still pushing this “All one big friendly community of mums trying to help one another” when it suits them - and unfortunately, people fall for it. The kind of poster who talk about “Justine” like she’s their friend; a sort of cross between the head of a local WI group and a benevolent teacher who treats the sixth formers like grown-ups. Mumsnet hasn’t been like that in nearly 20 years. It’s a multimillion pound business and WE are the product.

This is an incredibly serious issue that has shown up major flaws in the moderation process. “Awwh, it’s difficult when you’re managing with volunteers all mucking in together” just won’t wash.

Completely agree. See the latest post by "Justine". More concerned about closing down criticism than actually addressing this serious incident.

Why are people/a person trying to push the idea this was AI now. I don’t understand the motivation of people on here trying to minimise what happened or in some cases minimising the gravity of csa itself. oh and also minimising the upset of people who were exposed to it last night even though it’s been spelt out that a sizeable proportion of those will have been victims of csa themselves.

People really do suck.

Yes I find that very strange and a bit sinister.

And they aren't usually sneaked in to innocuous threads, so people know what they're going to get.

I’ve just read it. It reminds me of those people who do something awful, then cry when their half-hearted apology isn’t accepted.

What I am pleased to see in the latest hq post is that they haven’t directly called posting evidence of csa as trolling and have stated the activity was illegal. It’s incredibly disappointing that it has taken so long to do was seen as obviously necessary by posters from the off. And that it took multiple posts for them to even say what this was rather than trivialising with terms like trolling and vile images.

Those saying mn knew what they were doing and we should just shut up may want to note that albeit after massive delays the actions called for on this thread have largely been enacted.

It’s absolutely a cover up. I’m not getting any notifications about this thread either, despite many other posts subsequent to me last opening it. I had posted on the pulled AIBU, that I thought it was quite canny of MN to ‘consolidate’ the discussion in various Site Stuff threads yesterday by closing all the threads which made any reference to the abusive images, and leaving this one, which sounds so innocuous, unless you know that NW being left on the back foot overnight, meant CSA images were being uploaded across the site over a 4 hour period, apparently with no efficient means of stopping them.

Another issue that has occurred to me is that if the Nightwatch is voluntary and unpaid, what sort of organisation is there to even ensure that at least a couple of members are around on any given night? This was I think raised when it started and I don't remember there being an answer, happy to be corrected.

The NW are volunteers with their own lives and will have their own emergencies etc. Without a formal structure like a fully covered rota and paid roles, it can't be beyond belief that there will be no NWer active on MN at times.

This is not a shot at them. I'm really sorry they were put in the position they were the other night and had to see such awful things. I'm also sure that most nights they can cope fine but in running a business you plan for all contingencies and I don't believe this situation couldn't have been anticipated.

How long did it stay up for? I reported it at 11.11pm - just checked my email. I reported it twice, don't know whether that was the first or the second time.

Something so horrific should have been instantly removed.

Another thing that needs to be done is a means to highlight when reporting whether it’s an urgent/criminal matter and for those to go to another inbox or otherwise be flagged and prioritised.

And as stated many times there quite obviously has to be a way of escalating an incident to senior staff with authority and associated accountability whatever time it is.