To not ‘pay my way’?

[LeLavandou]

By not paying for Mumsnet Premium and using an ad blocker. Is that ‘not paying my way’ as Justine Roberts suggested on the MN premium thread in Site Stuff?
Does this make me a freeloader, if I still use MN and just block the ads? Given I only use the talk boards where content is produced by users, where does this stand in the MN freeloader stakes?

I have gone full circle with mumsnet and I think I will be subscribing. I have seen how some of the offshoots are moderated and I prefer it here. I decided to delete my account on an up and coming ‘rival’ site and I emailed them asking to delete my account and all data that they hold on me.

I didn’t get a reply to that, four days later I logged in to see if my request had been processed and I had been banned. So I have no idea if they still hold my data or not and I was banned for asking.

I know that the data leak here was bad and l am not minimising that but there is not some incredible and hacienda type place elsewhere.

As long as we are not allowed to freely discuss matters that affect women, I wouldn't consider paying a penny.

That is ignoring the fact that MN has for a long time been a rare example of a site that would allow any vaguely free discussion on this issue. That for me is one of the arguments for paying for Premium - to bolster that.

Agree with @EmpressJewel though that

doesn't give enough to members to warrant the price. It looks to me like MNHQ just cobbled a package together based on how much money the needed to raise not what would benefit those paying for the service.

It falls awkwardly between being a charity appeal to support the site, and a consumer offer where you actually get something. Time to rethink the package of what members get for Premium?

MN is not secure enough for me to feel comforatble giving them payment details or any identifying information. It's been hacked before. They employed a person who leaked data too. MN is a targeted site for doxxing, etc.

As a matter of interest I went on MN on a laptop I don’t have an adblocker on yet.

This is the type of ad MN are currently choosing to display....one wonders if they’re trying to force people’s hands!

Interesting: it is the FWR boards that would sway me towards paying, to make MN less vulnerable to the TRAs who try and get at the advertisers.

But now the whole GC position is dangerously close to being a purity spiral, I am not so sure. Not so long ago any poster who was happy to use preferred pronouns for long-standing fully transitioned trans women within their social circles were told by many that they were not feminists. Ha! I have actively campaigned on many feminist causes for currently respected rights for 40 years.

The mantra used to be “we are not anti-trans“, but that is less evident now.

Also... I cannot currently afford any more subscriptions, my income has fallen by 40%.

I guess the one good thing about the ancient software here is that it doesn't have the ability to spot that an adblocker is in use.

I find the ads inappropriate and intrusive and like the Daily Mail it is unusable on my device without an adblocker installed.

I don’t think that mumsnet is a targeted site for doxxing, I have seen doxxing of mumsnet members on an offshoot though.

Just posting for the deletion message ...

Can someone recommend an ad blocker for an iPad?

I've never used an ad blocker (wouldn't know how to, to be honest) but equally I've never been bothered by ads on mumsnet. There are far fewer ads than on other sites, such as newspaper articles. Some of those are almost impossible to read!

Given how appallingly poor and inconsistent the moderation is on here I’m amazed they’ve had the temerity to ask this

This thread will make about 3 pages, and go as quickly as the other two have.
Hope you don't get the ban like the others OP.

I use Adblock Plus on my iPad, Aridane. All I get is the small embedded banner ad at the top and a trio of Mumsnet Insight ads to the right in a small box. None of them flash, move or take up too much space, which is fine by me.
The Disney ad a few weeks ago was embedded and did sort of ‘bleed’ below the confines of its block so clicked on by accident a few times until it was replaced. If embedding ads like that to harvest fake, accidental clicks is a strategy a company finds useful then I’d be surprised.

Some people don't understand MN has some say on the ads being delivered but the top and side bar is Google generated so is based on what your history.

I don't think premium is worth it personally and it was badly timed and really badly implemented, the crass timing of it and trying to pull on the heart strings of it being a cottage industry of a few people round the kitchen table is naive at best.

I think it won't be long until their becomes a tiered approach from some users, some who have paid will expect preferential treatment because they pay with regards to what can/should be discussed etc.

The fact they were always going to introduce this business model shows that the other attempts haven't really worked and it's in its last throw of the dice territory anyway.

People need to understand that MN is a business, it may have started out with good intentions but at the end of the day its a business, we are the product and to be asked to pay for that privileged has never really worked out

Almost half the top of my page for the last two days has been an advert for MN premium.

The site isn't run professionally and needs to be.

There's no excuse at all for the staffing costs. Despite being told that the ads running costs users to be here anyway in terms of data on mobile internet (the only option some of us have) they continue to use them. Despite knowing they cause migraines and seziures they continue to use them. Any comments on ads results in a response of if there's a blue tick it's just Adsense and you can block it - but they don't tell you it's only free for so many ads a month after that it's a subscription service.

Then there's the threads that have been lifted, thanks to emails advertising threads of the day and the devastating impact that can have on someone's life - the woman whose young son had died and she was struggling to cope and clearly very unwell had her thread dragged all over the media and, they even tracked her Facebook page and lifted pictures of him and her and published them, she was all over various so called magazine shows in the following days as a "discussion topic". And no MN didn't care.

The moderation is haphazard at best. It took days for me to get MNHQ to understand that a suicide method for a diabetic should have been removed, instead I just got told it was fine. The people who got their threads deleted for being unable to sheild for whatever reason because it was against NHS guidelines - it's a fact and not a very welcome one that not everyone who needs to sheild can, why shouldn't they be supported instead of deleted and in one case, banned.

We are all people behind these words.

That's something MN forgets, preferring to see ££ ££ instead of people.

If everyone decided tomorrow to up and leave the income would be zero. Trying to get people to pay is a good way to make sure people do leave, and no their troubles won't be over when people pay - they're paying so they'll be a lot more insistent things are fixed on the site that until now have been ignored. No more sarky comments about "keeping the lights on" for one, no more childish deletion messages or attitude to issues such as GDPR and don't think that because they're using another company your details will be safe - that company has a very bad reputation for breaches of data too.

I wouldn’t pay. I wouldn’t trust MNHQ to keep my details secure. I think they can do what they want with their site though. If they want to make it subscription only or whatever they can. MNHQ provide the framework for the forums.

I won’t turn off my ad-blocker and I wouldn’t pay but I don’t blame MNHQ for doing what they want.

I’d perhaps consider contributing if they actually made an effort to keep trolls off the site instead of threatening to ban anyone they perceive as troll hunting.

And 24/7 moderation. Not relying on volunteers out of hours either who don't have the same powers are the paid moderators during the day.

I think they'll regret this decision.

I don’t block the ads but I also don’t really notice them and I very rarely click on them on purpose.

I feel like this thread has been started to get people all riled up about MN again and to prompt them into storming off to that copy cat website, which as predicted, has not lived up to the hype.

Surely most people use ad-block these days anyway?

No. Because I get that websites I use are businesses, not charities, with an business model driven by advertising revenue. If too many people install ad blockers then then the business fails to be profitable and they need to look at other revenue streams - which was true even before advertising revenue dried up thanks to the pandemic.

Too many users of the site seem to think MN should be run as a community enterprise.

I wont be paying my way either ill stick to having a freebie account

I wont be 'paying my way'.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth that someone living in a big house, filled with expensive lovely things, a car per adult, expensive schools for the DC, cupboards full of food, has asked people who have lost jobs, or taken paycuts, can't pay bills, or are having to use foodbanks, to pay for the website that they surely must have mismanaged as it was in financial difficulty after 2 weeks.