Note, this is not about whether or not you agree with paying for mumsnet premium, there are plenty of threads on that (just search on premium). I have loved and benefited from mumsnet (mostly humour) for years, and was happy to pay when told they needed help.
I noted as part of the debate on premium posters talking about MNHQ having 100 employees and a huge monthly wages budget (despite very few updates ever being made to the site) and questions about what those employees were all doing. I didn't think much of it. I don't know what goes into maintaining a site like this and I posted that I trusted MNHQ to make their own business decisions/no-one could have predicted COVID-19 and subscribed.
Watching my words carefully now, because this is not intended to be a thread about a thread (TAAT) and therefore subject to deletion by MNHQ.
Recently, I got very invested in two threads. Please, no-one post speculation about which ones or MNHQ will delete this thread. I gave a lot in terms of emotional support on one of them. I then found out from posts that were swiftly deleted by MNHQ that they weren't genuine, and that MNHQ had known that for a good while. I can't say more, because spelling out the details has been given as a reason by MNHQ for their insta-deletions of posts and threads on this.
I read a theory that some of the highly addicting threads with frequent updates are actually started and maintained by MNHQ employees as part of their job to keep traffic up on the site/appeal to advertisers etc.
I have not been able to get this out of my head. If I'd read this a few months ago I would have thought "paranoid, much?" and laughed, but now I keep wondering...
YABU = Don't be stupid. MNHQ employees don't manufacture threads and then swiftly delete posts that draw attention to trolls/non-genuine OPs for that reason? Don't listen to the cynical posts. Don't cancel premium for this reason.
YANBU = Yes they might be doing this. Deleting TAATs is a good excuse for them to use, along with troll-hunting. They care about ads and they don't care if you give your time and emotional energy to fake posters. Cancel premium. It's not the site you thought it was (sob).