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.

So you would think, but here we are 12 hours later.

Mumsnet is a multi-million pound venture, Justine the founder is also a multi-millionaire (all available information publicly)

So why they think they can exploit free labour with night watch is beyond me. They have had a massive failure with this situation and not a single word from any of the team.

24/7 moderation, by paid staff is now clearly essential.

I want to know what they plan on doing in regards to handing this to the police. I want a formal statement and an apology to the night team and the members who were subjected to such vile and distressing imagery.

It has been reported to the Police according to posters who received an email following their reports.

@DelusionalBrilliance this happened after the nighttime debacle a decade ago, no response other than eventually issuing a word salad of platitudes.

I work in a regulated environment. The measures required to ensure IT security are rigorous and expensive.

I hope that whichever regulatory body that is responsible for this hands them their arse on a plate.

Remind me again what the nighttime debacle of a decade ago was all about? I vaguely remember there being a debacle, but I can't remember why.

This.

It's unbelievable.

I can't believe night time moderators are still unpaid with that operating profit.

Disgraceful.

And that so long after last night's activity it's still possible to post photos, it hasn't been been paused temporarily. Unreal,

12 hours later still nothing heard from Justine 😵‍💫

Yes, it really needs a message and ownership from the top.

I would hope that all those affected have been contacted directly by Justine.

I can’t see anything in the news about this.

Afternoon, everyone.

Understandably, there are a lot of threads in Site Stuff about what happened in the early hours of today. Just so we can keep everyone updated easily about what's happening, we're going to close the other threads in Site Stuff to new posts for now and will put any new updates on this thread.

For anyone who missed it, BeckyAMumsnet posted an update at 08.28 here this morning which gives some information. We'll be back as soon as we have any more to share. Thank you for your patience so far. As you can imagine we've been very busy here this morning but we will update as soon as possible.

MN is a huge internationally-used site, accessed and posted on from all time zones, why is "night watch" even a thing (I actually didn't know about this until now)? Moderation standards and procedures should be uniform all the time. Should the Aussie users expect a lesser standard of moderation in their daytime than those in Europe?

It was from soon after 11pm which you would know if you had read these threads. Not the early hours of the morning.

These non comments are actually offensive as a response. You may have contacted the nw and people who had reported at the time( the first report we know of was 11.15pm yesterday) but there are many others who saw those images including some for whom this will have been extremely damaging to their own history or those of their children.

Yet no apology or accountability thus far let alone acknowledgment of the fact users have been warning you about the dangers of your overnight policies for over a decade.

Does anyone know who the governing body /ombudsman for businesses of this nature?

I just hope the perpetrator can be identified and brought to justice.

Its not a "feminist point" to note the fact that sites used by and supporting any group in a protected category is likely to be at increased risk of attack.

This kind of attack is pretty common atm. Groups supporting protected characteristics are at risk both from the fly by troll groups and those who specifically target that characteristic. That will relevant and will inform the type of response and the necessary changes in processes.

@MNHQ you have let a thread stand in Films where the OP is arguing against the ban on AI generated images of child sex abuse, and is arguing for child sex abuse images to be allowed in fiction and in 'training materials'. I and others reported this post yesterday. Why is it being allowed to remain?

I’ve been a member of mumsnet for 16 or 17 years and lessons never seem to be learned and there is never enough transparency including following serious data breaches.

Completely agree. The lack of any proper response and action, along with the fact that the ability is there to post images, is as almost bad as the fact the images could be uploaded in the first place! What’s to stop him from doing it again?!

I saw the images last night. I reported the post and it was so distressing to try and report as I had to look at the post again.

I couldn’t sleep until I knew they had gone. After 10 minutes they were still there. I then realised that I needed to post in Night Watch.

It’s dreadful that they were even able to be posted in the first place but even worse that it took a seasoned user who knew that such a thing as night watch existed.

10 minutes those images were there. They will be etched in my mind for much longer.

Yes. Obviously your comment was deemed worse than csa images. Or just that they can be arsed so long as it’s in office hours. I didn’t see your comment btw

Really? That's appalling, especially given what happened last night.

Is the post in films still there? I’d advise screenshots if so.