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.

It's all a bit 'nothing to see here'. Except there was. Even on a thread about soup. Soup, for God's sake.

And what actual support are they going to provide for the users who saw CSA?!

Not good enough. What moderation will be in place at night - starting from tonight? Why isn't the ability to post photos being removed NOW until new measures are in place? What timescale are you attaching to 'a matter of urgency'?

And I don't think much of your 'apology' to the people who saw the images and find it hard to imagine that they will find your response reassuring.

Yes what @LaDoIceVita said !

'Sorry'? That's it. 'Sorry'?
It was seriously sickening and appalling child sexual abuse imagery that can and probably has caused severe trauma in a lot of people today, and you're 'Sorry?

Pathetic.

Image screening/delaying images being posted by new accounts is the absolutely BARE minimum, and you know that.

What we want to hear, and what needs to happen, is you reassuring us that a full time, proper moderation team is being implemented to protect the users of Mumsnet from any repeat of this kind of vile trolling.

Stop using the Night Watch, it is not fit for purpose.

To be fair on MNHQ, I think that the communications they have made today are fine for now - while they are presumably busy with the police and with implementing short-term mitigations.

Their communications are way franker than we would get from the likes of Facebook or X, and I imagine that in a few days when they have had time to work out a longer term solution they will provide fuller updates,

Well quite. I have a thing that I suppress, and sometimes it pops up, but this has made it crash right into my brain for the first time ina few years. I'll squash it again, sure, but it's OK to feel fucking furious.

Ok but I agree with pp use the correct term CSA not vile images

And will volunteers be paid and have proper processes?

No, they were not.

Oh come on! You aren't taking this remotely seriously.

How are we to know exactly the same won't happen tonight? What have you done to protect your customers?

What additional measures have been implemented now?

What measures are being taken to support the nightwatch team who you exposed to harm?

Do you even know whether you have a nightwatch for tonight?

This response is absolutely disgusting.

Exactly. I’ve been using the internet since 1996. This was the first time in those 29 years that I have seen images like that. If other places can prevent it or quickly remove it then MN certainly can.

Are you their PR company? It is not a good response. Justine tried to minimise CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE as “vile images” from a troll. There has been zero duty of care to the people affected by this, no signposting to organisations dealing with these issues, and no offer to provide support, ie therapy etc.

They don't. Some posters are not aware that they can go to the night watch section and flag up suspect threads or posts there, so they hit report as normal and it's not dealt with until the following day during office hours. Even if 30 posters reported it, the thread content would remain visible all night, so long as no-one was aware they could report it on the Night Watch sub forum, so it can be hidden as soon as one of the volunteers is aware of it. In the case of last night, one of the threads was up for 40 minutes I believe. Apart from some die hard night owls and shift workers, lots of people don't realise NW exists.

The problem with the Night Watch sub forum is that it's difficult to mention the problem threads in any detail without alerting more people to the fact that they are there or posting a link to make them easy to find for the NW peoople, so you could arguably say you are sharing the content or driving more people there.

It's also pretty impossible for the NW volunteers to hide the flagged threads without having to open them and check them first.

@JustineMumsnet
Last night I was someone who saw the vile CSA images. I reported them to NW and I have to say I was impressed it was hidden right away.

I also reported the post.

However, I was not the only one who saw it. Where is your duty of care to me and others like me who saw it?
The message I got following the Report Post did not signpost me to any sources of support:

”Hi there,
Thanks so much for the report. We are sorry you had to see those awful images. We have posted an update on the situation here:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5266690-its-time-to-rethink-the-night-watch-volunteer-system?reply=141875463
Best wishes,
Pip
MNHQ”

I was so sickened I vomited. i have felt sick to my stomach ever since. I don’t ever want to see such images. They are criminal and abhorrent.

Do you really think you have done enough for users such as myself who saw those images? You know who reported posts. We’ve had no support unless we potentially go looking for support ourselves.

Not good enough.

Yeah, this. It's minimising and with no timescale for even the most obvious changes that ought to be made.

I'd say highly likely to happen again.

The perpetrator knows what is possible and is probably reading the absolute not giving a shit responses of HQ and now knows from 11pm they have free rein to crack on.

And there will likely be no nightwatch, because realistically who is going to put themselves at risk.

Justine and her team clearly don't give a shiny shit about the nightwatch volunteers or the membership of the site.

At a minimum, MNHQ should have suspended the ability to post pictures - I honestly don’t think being able to post pictures is central to what MN does - I’m sure we can manage without.

You'll understand that we're not going to detail every troll countering measure here. That would be foolish I think.

@JustineMumsnet you're not going into any detail.

Why hasn't posting images been disabled at the very least?

I made a post saying I thought Justine’s response was poor and didn’t give users much comfort that anything was being done to prevent this happening again.

My post was deleted.

Interesting.

I’m off to check my emails as I’m sure there’ll be a wrist-slap from MNHQ in there but, in the meantime, I would welcome engagement on this thread from @mnhq or @BeckyAMumsnet @HebeMumsnet @JustineMumsnet as to why posts are being deleted and what talk guidelines they’ve breached.

How would it make a difference? Either you're putting things in place that will stop this from being able to happen at all, in which case it would be fine to share, or you're not and that's not good enough, and you're obfuscating.

Wow.

I reported the CSA images using the report button. I knew nothing about the night watch.

When the first user report was made MN should have shut the whole site down. Instead they were broadcast around the world for hours.
I can still see the images in my minds eye.
MN is criminally negligent.

@JustineMumsnet Is there anything to stop dodgy links being posted also?