The MNHQ Moderation Team: Thread 2

[BarrackerBarmer]

Follow on thread regarding the data breach situation:
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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.

Also place marking for an update from MNHQ.

@TERFousBreakdown
I agree. Data protection shouldn't necessarily be about restricting access. Employers should seek to develop a culture where data protection is taken seriously and employees have a clear understanding of the law and how they should treat personal data. From what I can understand, this doesn't seem to be the case at Mumsnet, as @Johnnyfinland says as an employee they weren't even aware whether there was a clause about privacy in their contract.

Will they even bother taking this seriously?

Of course it doesn't reflect the advice any legal representing would give.

You can’t reasonably be refused if you ask for deletion now and after 25 May you absolutely cannot.

That is excellent information, thank you Bumblefuddle*

In all likelihood, Mumsnet is going to start to look like Swiss Cheese in a month or two. Posters will want to adopt a scorched earth policy, not because they don't stand by what they have posted, but because of no confidence in the systems and guardians of their anonymity.

If I have posted about my birth experience under one name, my children's school uniform policy on another, my opinion on a local hospital on another, my stance on abortion under a different name and my gender critical views on another, the risk from a rogue MN employee linking the jigsaw purely through having unnecessary access is far too high. Combine that with lacksadaisical recruitment processes and its a disaster waiting to happen.

I think we shall see a Scorched Earth movement from prolific posters. It may not be the best way for MNHQ, but it will be safer for posters.

It will add a layer of incentive for MNHQ to ensure that jigsaw piece identification by staff isn't just unlikely, but near impossible.

Has there been an update from MNHQ yet or are they brushing it all under the carpet? I have massive concerns about this and any further screen shots this former employee has retained. There lack of transparency and failure to implement legal sanctions are making me doubt mumsnet completely.

Hmmm how long to wait till I request removal of all data relating to me .....

Has there been an update from MNHQ yet

I imagine that at 11.00 the day after they are in meetings with lawyers and briefing staff.

Hi all,
We've spoken to the Information Commissioner this morning and reported the breach. We'll be reporting it to the police shortly (the Information Commissioner advised that this was a discretionary call in this case).

We'll be back with some more detailed answers to your questions about data, procedure and safeguarding shortly. Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.

Thankyou @JustineMumsnet
I'm glad you are taking both actions

Thanks Justine.

Very glad this is being reported to the police.

Has anyone seen any coverage of this? I would have expected there to be but it's like it's being brushed under the carpet.

Thanks for the update, Justine.

Thanks Justine

In February I posted a thread in site stuff asking if tech could provide users with the ability to search their posting history on ALL their usernames. I've been concerned about jigsaw piecing data for a while and have been posting here for a decade under various names, so can hardly remember which I used and when.

MNHQ said this would be possible but I think they probably need to see enough demand for it.

If you would like to be able to search quickly through your MN posts on all your usernames to better manage your online footprint, then you can add to my thread here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/3167235-Ability-to-advanced-search-on-ALL-ones-own-past-usernames?watched=1&msgid=77234630#77234630

The advantage of this may be to spare MNHQ the swiss cheese effect of scorched earth deletions. If users can more easily find their worrisome posts they can delete the concerning ones only, and leave the others to stand.
If we can't easily find that post we think we wrote 8 years ago under one of 20 usernames we've had, we may choose to wipe everything.

Thankyou Justine, both for the Times article earlier in the week and in the actions you have now taken to report the situation. I appreciate its probably very hard to answer all site users queries and concerns in an uncertain and dynamic scenario but look forward to any updates.

I am glad to see that MNHQ are dealing with this - and I hope that the people whom Emma Healey has doxxed are not too stressed by the whole thing.

Unfortunately for Emma, I think she is going to learn the hard way, that the Internet never forgets. Any future employer who googles her, is going to find out what she did as an intern at MNHQ - and I would not employ someone who is, at best, stupidly careless with the personal data of others or, at worst, happy to deliberately give away private data.

Thank you Justine, that was a rather more reassuring response