Hi all,
We’ve been reading this thread and wanted to respond to some of the points raised.
We do take racism, xenophobia, homophobia and other forms of hate speech seriously. We do not allow hate speech on Mumsnet and will always delete it when it’s reported. There are around 25,000 posts a day on Mumsnet, so we can’t pre-read every one; we rely on users to report posts they believe break our guidelines.
At the same time, we don’t remove posts simply because they are contentious, strongly expressed, or because other posters disagree with them. Some posts are reported to us as hate speech when, under our guidelines, they don’t meet that threshold.
Mumsnet is unusual in being a part of the internet largely dominated by women, and specifically designed for people to discuss anonymously the things in their lives that are troubling them, whether those concerns are about themselves, their families or their children. We think that’s a large part of its value: people can discuss things on Mumsnet that they may not feel able to discuss elsewhere online. That can mean hosting conversations around difficult or polarised issues where people have strong views about what should and shouldn’t be said. Our main principle is that, where something is not hate speech and people are engaging in good faith, we would rather let the conversation play out. Many Mumsnet users have had their minds changed by being exposed to alternative points of view they may not come across in the algorithmic filter bubbles of other platforms.
There is a fair point in this thread about derailment. We know posters can find it frustrating when the same topics are brought into threads where they weren’t the original subject. Please do report this when you see it, particularly where it seems deliberately inflammatory or intended to drag discussion away from the issue at hand.
Reporting specific posts is always the quickest and most effective way to flag something to us. A Site stuff thread like this is useful context, but reports give us the actual posts to review.
Thanks,
MNHQ