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.

[Ifonlyus]

Does an intern get access to our email addresses and personal details? Do they do any kind of information governance training?

[CircleSquareCircleSquare]

Could this come under

Part B: Issues in Social Media offending

Cyber-enabled VAWG Offences

Hacking into social media accounts and then monitoring and controlling the accounts.

[mostdays]

Hear, hear @reasonprevails .

[Janie143]

Remember the warning that a lot of TRA work in IT

[spontaneousgiventime]

Just how many of her tweets were screenshot by others who now have a copy? How many other screen shots has she shared that she didn't post?

[Morphene]

hmm...this seems like a clear case of why put potentially problematic information up when its presumably of no use to the moderators.

I mean what are they supposed to use the IP address for? Presumably they aren't expected to memorize them and look for sock puppets that way?

[BarrackerBarmer]

Thanks for responding KateMumsnet

I realise you will need some time to look into this.

We'll try to give you that time, but please also understand that posters are genuinely concerned and will need reassurance and answers as soon as you are able.

[KatherinaMinola]

An intern? I think better vetting procedures are needed, @MNHQ

I imagine that what this person has done - data theft by the looks of things - is actionable.

[RosenbergW]

So her tweets need protection but other women's private data does not?

[RefuseToDenounceBiology]

She needs to be legally compelled to hand over all the screenshots she has taken.

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

It's not MN's fault if she took screenshots of data off the premises, which she must have done to have posted them last week on that thread. Her employment stopped in March, so she posted that information after she had finsished working with MN

She probably has a dossier on us all.

[mostdays]

That said, I am sure many of the people who post quite breathtakingly foul anti trans things here happily would say the same things to a transperson's face, because they genuinely cannot see how unpleasant and cruel they are being. There are plenty of people with valid concerns around self ID who manage to express those concerns with passion but without sinking to that level, but unfortunately there does seem to be a certain number of people on here who are incapable of that.

[Battleax]

Oh dear.

[Battleax]

I imagine MNHQ are scrambling a meeting.

This is bound to end up in court.

[DixieFlatline]

Can someone state or PM me the username of the person whose IP address was in the screenshot? The person has no chance of going anywhere with it if they now can't check if it was them. And I'd definitely like to be warned if it was me!

[WillowWept]

It's not MN's fault if she took screenshots of data off the premises, which she must have done to have posted them last week on that thread

It depends what you meant by "fault". They are legally accountable for the actions of their employees past and present.

[CircleSquareCircleSquare]

I think this has wider implications beyond FWR. What else does this intern have issues with? Which other areas of MN has she been stealing user data from?

[Ifonlyus]

mostdays That said, I am sure many of the people who post quite breathtakingly foul anti trans things here happily would say the same things to a transperson's face, because they genuinely cannot see how unpleasant and cruel they are being. There are plenty of people with valid concerns around self ID who manage to express those concerns with passion but without sinking to that level, but unfortunately there does seem to be a certain number of people on here who are incapable of that.

The problem is we had a whole thread about women who had been reprimanded in their workplace just for holding gender critical views. I don't trust someone with an agenda to make a distinction between the GC posters who post politely or neutrally, and those who at times breach the law.

[spontaneousgiventime]

This is bound to end up in court.

It really needs to, to restore credibility and trust.

[StealthNinjaMum]

So any future employer who now googles "Emma Healey" will find this thread and see that she has potentially stolen a previous employers' data to use against it's users / customers.

Smart move Emma Healey.