The MNHQ Moderation team

[BarrackerBarmer]

Dear MNHQ

I'm very grateful for the commitment to free speech you've publicly taken, and for Justine's courage this week.

A former disgruntled employee of MN is writing on Twitter about the 'transphobia' of MN staff, and calling you TERFs. She is showing a great deal of bias and intolerance towards women with feminist views, this may well be her honest opinion, which is no big deal I suppose, since she is no longer an employee.

At least, it isn't an issue until she calls a shout out to her
'friends who still work at MN' to report and take down posts by 'transphobic scum', by which she appears to be referring to any poster objecting to being called TERF by her friend.

Regardless of the personal views of the MNHQ staff, who should be as free to hold their own views as I am mine, I am disturbed that there may be a small contingent of employees who are invested in unfair moderation and will not be applying fair-handed principles, at least if the claims of this ex-employee are credible.

Can you please give posters some reassurance that the difficult job of fair-handed moderation isn't being abused by the 'friends' of ex-employees who are 'reporting it all' and taking down posts because any gender criticism means the poster is 'transphobic scum'?

Thank you.

This really does need to go through the ICO, doesn't it? Not just an in-house follow-up by Mumsnet?

A slap on the wrist and 'we know you're sorry and of course you've deleted the info' doesn't seem quite adequate

Thanks for the clear explanation about the IP addresses RedToothBrush.

are you saying that the four users whose IP addresses were screenshotted should turn their routers off and on again?

she's now deleted her Twitter account,

Nope. Her Twitter account is still there. She's just made it private so it can only be viewed by people who currently follow her.

Though I hate to see Mumsnet impacted.

Damn

She's certainly got a lot of projection and displaced anger

Take an organisation down from within comes to mind

Actually there was a tweet where she said that she knew that she would not be getting a reference from MN but that she wa going to do it anyway. She knew what she was doing

The posting of screenshots with private information may have been a mistake, but taking screenshots as a moderator, hanging onto them for months and then tweeting them does go beyond what could be reasonably construed as an 'accident'.

Indeed.

Were I to leave my job my work laptop would be taken from me meaning the only way I'd still have access to screenshots is if I'd sent them to a personal email address whilst still in employment. This is standard across most workplaces and I assume that MN works the same way.

This implies that these screenshots have been taken and sent over a period of months, or else stored up until Emma Healey knew she was leaving and decided that they would be good ammunition to take with her. It is clearly premeditated and I'd be incredibly concerned about who else she has sent however many screenshots to in her self-righteous crusade against free speech.

My concern would be what else has she shared ‘privatley’ amongst her friends on WhatsApp, snapchat, email, direct messages, etc.?

My suspicion is there is never ‘one offence’, she will have built up to this over time.

This must be a police matter.

The fact that this individual had screenshot stuff and taken it with her suggests there was always an intention to do something with it. Or it has already been used elsewhere / forwarded to other people. This isn't a spur of the moment thing.

Exactly. And how much more data did this person steal?

Regardless of which side of the trans debate you're on, this is an illegal data breach and, very possibly, intended as material for further, possibly even criminal, use of data by others.

A police matter, surely?

Those names are still going round, just typing in Mumsnet brings it up and while i do agree that the IP address is not that bad by itself, if someone really wanted to they could AS those names and start putting stuff together, along with the IP address, it could be a problem

The posting of screenshots with private information may have been a mistake, but taking screenshots as a moderator, hanging onto them for months and then tweeting them does go beyond what could be reasonably construed as an 'accident'.

Quite!

Justine I understand this is a hard week for you and I am very appreciative of you sticking your neck out on the line for free speech whether you agree with us or not.

However I’m afraid this horrific (and when up addresses can give away the locations of women and their children it is horrific) theft of data. Beyond contacting her for breaking her contract will you support users impacted in this in taking legal action or contacting the relevant authorities?
Will there be an investigation into her former colleagues who she now suggests are feeing her information?

If stating biological fact on the internet is “literally killing people”, then publishing data which could potentially reveal data of women and children is what exactly?

Whether she has a twitter account or not she has access to other ways to spread information privately.

Which is why I asked if her devices and messaging apps etc will be investigated? Along with anyone she has been in contact with about this in the time since she started working at Mumsnet.

@JustineMumsnet the bigger issue isn’t what she already published, it’s a known entity, it’s how other data she stole, has kept, what she has done with it, and what she will do with it.

I believe she should be reported to the police and this reported to the ICO, even if her former colkeagues do consider her a nice person.

Wow , what a ridiculous thing to do

Just to say, if you just search 'Mumsnet' on twitter. there's an 'article' posted by @LGBTLD that posts EH's entire thread with her comments, including all the original screenshots. So that information is still out there, despite her locking down her account. It took me about 30 seconds to find and has a sensationalist title to draw people in.

Bloody hell.

FeministBadger

Were I to leave my job my work laptop would be taken from me meaning the only way I'd still have access to screenshots is if I'd sent them to a personal email address whilst still in employment. This is standard across most workplaces and I assume that MN works the same way.

This implies that these screenshots have been taken and sent over a period of months, or else stored up until Emma Healey knew she was leaving and decided that they would be good ammunition to take with her. It is clearly premeditated and I'd be incredibly concerned about who else she has sent however many screenshots to in her self-righteous crusade against free speech.

^
I believe storage of data is something that is legally covered somehow too?

Targeting adverisers didn't work so ..... Plan B

She is not a nice person. A nice person doesn't try and expose women and children to potentially violent doxxers. In the week after Tara Wood was convicted of assaulting a gender critical woman, she chose to do this.

I hope her career is ruined.

I don't reboot often, so my IP is not changed often. And even if it is, there are tools online which can identity your location from an IP pretty damn accurately. Might not be the house number, but location. And if you are rural it get far easier to pinpoint.

Maybe not for your avergage user sure, but some of these TRAs are vicious. I know, I encountered them coming after me on twitter