Could MNHQ please clarify its policy with regard to tackling misinformation and disinformation on the site?

[MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack]

There is a lot of misinformation and disinformation here on Mumsnet. I expect most site users will be aware of this. It is not unique to Mumsnet by any means - disinformation is everywhere on the Internet these days.

The Mumsnet reporting function has an option which explicitly allows users to report posts as "misinformation". However, it is not clear to me as to what MNHQ's policy is for dealing with such reports, and I would be grateful if this could be clarified.

On previous occasions, when I have reported unequivocally false statements on Mumsnet, I have been told that MNHQ doesn't have the ability to check whether claims are factual or not, and so I should challenge the false statements on the relevant thread instead. I know that other posters have received similar responses.

I can sort of accept the explanation that the moderators may not have either the time or the skills to fact check everything, though I do personally think there is still an argument that MNHQ should take more responsibility for preventing the spread of disinformation via their site. However, I have found it harder to understand why they still provide an option for reporting misinformation if they do not actually feel that they are able to tackle it in practice. Is it merely to give the impression that they might do something about it?

Yesterday, I reported a post which contained a false statement that was presented as fact. It was not a statement that could be open to interpretation or a matter of subjective judgement. It was simply false, and demonstrably so.

I did not receive any response to the report for many hours. Then eventually I received a response which stated that the post did not break Talk Guidelines and that it would therefore be left to stand so that it could be challenged on the thread.

I responded to the email to ask for clarification as to whether misinformation or disinformation is now permitted under Talk Guidelines, and to ask what the "report misinformation" function was for if this is no longer breaking Talk Guidelines. I have not received any response to that query. However, a few minutes after sending it, I received a separate email (from the same moderator), thanking me for reporting the post in question and confirming that the post had been deleted. The email made no reference to the earlier emails, didn't explain the earlier statement that the post hadn't broken any Talk Guidelines, didn't address the questions that I had asked. I checked the thread, and the false post had indeed been deleted. But I don't think it would have been if I had not pushed back.

It is difficult to have much faith in Mumsnet moderation when such inconsistencies arise. The most charitable explanation that I can think of is that the moderator didn't really bother checking the post properly before initially deciding to allow it to stand.

I do appreciate that the moderators are human, and that they will make mistakes sometimes, but this seems to happen far more often than it should. Could MNHQ please shed some light on the specific procedures that are followed when reports of misinformation are received, and what the actual policy is with regard to dealing with misinformation and disinformation when it is identified.

Thank you

Obviously not my question but referring to anyone or any organisation as Nazis is way beyond the line in my view. I think we have to remember what Nazis are and what they did. The fact someone disagrees with you about welfare or toilets doesn't make them a Nazi and the person who suggests as such probably shouldn't be on the site.

@BeckyAMumsnet there is a poster currently posting false information about migrants being secretly flown into the UK. Is that acceptable? Fact check below.

uk.news.yahoo.com/fact-checked-false-claims-migrants-100000602.html

I really like that idea.

Thanks @BeckyAMumsnet

Thanks for your view - interesting.

Noted.

There is a whole thread in active now which is based on disinformation in the OP. The media had their wrists slapped previously for incorrect use of data on this to the extent The Times had to apologise.

I presume we are meant to argue so that people can tell us we are blind/stupid/ woke.

I saw that. I was wondering if anyone had reported it.

No point.

Posts like this relating to various airports have been doing the rounds for months. As far as I'm aware, there has been no official statement from the Home Office regarding any of them. Articles claiming to 'fact check' are meaningless which is why stories continue to circulate. A simple statement from the government would stop all of this scaremongering.

Thank you @BeckyAMumsnet. I do appreciate the response, and I'm sorry that it's taken me a while to come back to you. I'm afraid this topic makes me rather weary and a bit disheartened, and I've been trying to build up the energy to engage with it again.

I agree with your definitions and I take your point that it isn't always possible to distinguish between misinformation and disinformation, though I do think the underlying intention and agenda is often pretty clear. Regardless, I accept that MNHQ might feel that it isn't in a position to judge a poster's intention, and that's fair enough. I also fully agree that there has to be ample room on MN for people to voice different points of view that others might disagree with. My issue is not with people expressing opinions that don't accord with my own, but with people presenting false information that purports to be fact. Finally, I accept that MN quite naturally want to keep conversations flowing as naturally as possible, and that overly zealous deletions serve to interrupt that flow. So far, so good.

I also understand that MN moderators are not fact checkers, and that you probably don't have the capacity or the expertise to undertake this role. Again, fair enough.

Where I'm still confused, though, is exactly when you intervene and when you don't. You say that it isn't your policy to delete everything that is factually wrong, and this seems to be borne out by our experience of the site. But what that does not tell me is why you intervene on some occasions and not others - and this inconsistency applies even in situations where the misinformation is inflammatory or harmful.

So, is the decision to delete based on a personal knowledge and judgement of the moderator? The number of reports received? The evidence or explanation provided with the report? Or some other criteria? It would be good to know, so that we can understand the apparent inconsistency in your approach.

As things stand, I'm not sure that I agree with your assessment that the practical impact of your current approach isn't a free pass for people to post deliberately misleading information. I think people are doing exactly that every day, typically without consequence. And while I appreciate the sentiment of the Talk Guidelines, it's pretty clear that they do not in fact prevent inflammatory posts and hate speech on the site - people can learn how to bypass the moderation process easily enough if they are that way inclined. As we see daily.

In light of the above, I agree with other posters that the misinformation report function is redundant as it stands. It creates a false impression that MN is going to tackle misinformation when you have effectively said that you can't. I hope that you might revisit that position in light of the recent warnings from the head of MI5. Disinformation is a serious threat to our national security, and as a major platform reaching a significant proportion of the UK population, I think MN has a responsibility to tackle the issue more than it is doing at present, though I do appreciate that this is not straightforward or easy to do.

Re suggesting the option to respond on the thread? I don't really understand this, as we are all involved in discussions on the thread in any case. If we have taken the trouble to report a post, it is not usually because it hasn't occurred to us to challenge it on the thread, but rather because we have concluded that the post is too egregious to be allowed to stand. It feels rather patronising for MN to "suggest" that we challenge it on the thread as if this isn't the obvious first port of call. And frankly, it does just feel like it's MN handing over responsibility for challenging disinformation to users rather than tackling it itself. As for being allowed to repeatedly press posters to back up their false claims, MN has given mixed messages on this, and I remain unclear as to what is allowed and what isn't.

I don't need you to check out the specific example I mentioned. It was clearly just a cock-up, like some of the others mentioned on this thread. But I would still like more clarity/transparency about when you will delete false claims and when you won't, as while your response is helpful and genuinely appreciated, I still none the wiser really about how specific moderation decisions are made.

It’s the first time I’ve heard it. I think it would be entirely wrong for the government to dignify such a ridiculous rumour with a response, not to mention drawing attention to it and risking more credulous people believing and spreading it.

Drawing attention to it? This has been all over the media across the North West.

Has it? It hasn’t travelled south so probably best to keep it contained.

Which media? The only local media I have seen has debunked the claim.

If the government had to make a statement about every stupid conspiracy theory doing the rounds they'd need a minister and a whole team to do so. The people who fall for this crap wouldn't believe such statements anyway.

I sometimes don't challenge on the thread OP mainly because I don't want to be attacked and would rather false posts just disappeared without further attention being brought to them.

It's rather late to try and keep it contained - there are thousands of SM posts on this already. Birmingham airport was one of those named.

I expect there are. You do know sm is dominated by bots and only those inclined to believe such nonsense are fed it through their algorithms?

Of course, which is why action is needed. It's a pity you disagree.

Thanks for this @BeckyAMumsnet . The only thing I’d say, is it is not just coordinated bots posting on the site that is the problem, it is posters repeating divisive propaganda and conspiracy theories as fact - maybe they don’t realise they are potentially sharing state propaganda from foreign actors seeking to divide our society, but that doesn’t make the impact any less. At the very least, I think the Hate speech definitions need to be reviewed to include known conspiracy theories - I have for example seen various versions of the deeply antisemitic great replacement theory allowed to stand.

I have for example seen various versions of the deeply antisemitic great replacement theory allowed to stand

Yes. Me too.

It’s also worth saying that Mumsnet isn’t necessarily the obvious first choice for this sort of activity.

I'm afraid I don't think that's true and I'm actually quite surprised that MNHQ thinks this. Mumsnet has been regarded as a touchstone for the UK public for quite a number of years now. It's high profile. It has a large reach. It's average users are often more involved with the site than the average Facebook user would be.

There's a reason politicians do Q&As on here. Mumsnets own surveys show that 98% of posters on here vote. The last general election turnout was 60%. There's a reason Mumsnet has run so many successful campaigns for change.

Targeting Mumsnet with bots to whip up whatever sentiment you wanted about UK society would be extremely effective given the number of users and how politically engaged they are. Much moreso than spamming Facebook or Tiktok whose users might not a) be UK based or b) politically engaged.

Honestly if I wanted to orchestrate a campaign to discredit X politician or get people to start complaining about benefit claimants (for example), Mumsnet would be one of the first I would go for and I would have thought that is obvious to anyone with a tenuous grip on UK society, politics, and culture over the last two decades.

I completely agree and it's this kind of response from MNHQ which supports my earlier post that they give the impression of being very unsophisticated when it comes to recognising and dealing with bad actors.

I remember when Russia killed someone on UK soil with novichok and MN threads were suddenly full of doubt over whether Russia were behind it.

The idea that MN isn't a target for disinformation seems wildly implausible and extremely naive. I would like to know why they think that when the averagely engaged user would disagree.

In fairness to MN, there was a leader of a main political party at the time who wanted to cast doubt on Russian responsibility for the Novichok attack. It wasn’t necessarily bots and dark propagandists posting such crap: it might have been keen supporters of that party.

I can remember many, many threads that expressed support for said leader whatever rubbish - sometimes deeply offensive rubbish - he spouted.

Tbf, I work in law and this is a slippery slope. The question nobody can answer is: who decides what's real and what's fake?
Imagine Trump banning "fake news." He already uses that label for any coverage he doesn't like. A law would hand him, or whoever comes next, the power to make that official.
Truth isn't always obvious at the time either. Plenty of stories that exposed real wrongdoing were dismissed as false at first. If you punish "falsehood" in real time, you risk silencing the stories that later turn out to be true.
The law doesn't even need to be used much to do damage. If journalists and ordinary people are scared of being prosecuted, they stop speaking. That's the chilling effect, and it's very effective.
Words like "false" or "misleading" are also so vague that they invite selective enforcement: go after your critics, ignore your allies. We've seen it happen. Russia criminalised "false information" about its military, which really meant anything contradicting the official line on Ukraine. Malaysia passed an anti-fake-news law in 2018, used it against critics, and scrapped it a year later.
And whatever power you create now gets inherited by the next government, which might be one you trust a lot less.
I'm not saying disinformation isn't a real problem, because it is. But the answer is narrow, clearly defined rules enforced by independent courts, plus transparency and media literacy. Not a blanket power to decide what's true.