To think most of you don’t know Mumsnet are now requiring acceptance of cookie tracking or payment to use the site?

[OldChairMan]

… as MN have only posted in Site Stuff:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5268190-introducing-pay-or-consent-on-mumsnet?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

Many will click on “Read for free” without realising that this is a change in the site’s terms.

“Hello everyone.

We wanted to give you a heads-up about a change in the way we deal with cookie consent. We are introducing a Pay or Consent model, giving you two different options to continue accessing the site:

• Continue for free with cookies and ads: this is the option that most people have enabled already.
• Subscribe to Mumsnet Premium: For those who prefer an ad-free experience with no cookies/tracking for ad purposes - Besides ad-free you’ll also get first access to our product tests plus all revenues from Premium are put towards our campaigning work

Why are we making this change?

The pay or consent model is becoming increasingly common across online platforms as publishers adapt to changes in advertising levels and data privacy regulations. Like many other publishers, we relied on advertising to generate income but changes in tracking regulation and the growing use of ad blockers have made this model less viable.

We know that Mumsnet is an essential space for many - a place to seek advice, find support, and connect with your fellow Mumsnetters. That’s why we’re committed to ensuring that the site remains free at the point of use for anyone who needs it but it’s not fair that those who install ad blockers or rejected cookies are piggy backing on the back of other users who haven’t.

At the same time as introducing this, we’re going to reduce the price of Mumsnet Premium to £2.99 a month because we want to be fair to those who’d rather not accept advertising cookies. This is less than the cost of a flat white a month from most decent coffee shops and we very much hope you think Mumsnet’s worth it! Nb anyone who’s signed up to Mumsnet Premium already at the previous price (£4.99 per month) will have their payments reduced within the next week or so.

We’ll be here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, as always, for supporting Mumsnet.”

Feel free to believe me or not, but I do actually have a couple of decades' experience in this.

I'm not particularly curious because I already know what the overall effects of this kind of communication are, but if you are...have a wander through this thread and see how many accounts have been closed by people complaining about it.

The Guardian is not a forum. The business model and behaviour of members are very, very different.

Forums are more akin to social media sites in the way they appeal to users, based purely on the fact that the majority of content requires interaction.

So all the more reason not to insult your users then, surely?

I don’t understand what you mean about looking at how many accounts have been closed. That’s what I said, complainers will not close their accounts. They like to stay here to complain.

No, you're clearly trying to logic your way through this by comparing social media to more normal websites where the owners publish content and the users consume it.

That is not this model at all.

Forums like MN are just as addictive to their users as Facebook, TikTok and X are to theirs, and they rely on the exact same mechanisms to continue encouraging engagement. Anger works just as well as love and enthusiasm in that regard...in fact, it's usually more effective, no matter who it's aimed at.

The point is that unless 10k users close their accounts and/or never come back because of this, nobody at MNHQ will even blink. As I said...believe me or not, it makes no difference to me. I know what works, I know how it works, and I've seen it work time and time again; it will probably make no difference to your life either way since (statistically-speaking) you're unlikely to be managing any large communities any time soon.

That last is not meant as an insult, by the way; in fact, believe me...you're far better off that way ;)

Exactly. MN relies on us to post its content - so we're basically paying for content we've created.

There is a way to get around paywalls and the like. Obvs, I won't post the exact site here as it'll probably get me banned! But there is a way...

I have a couple of decades comms experience, and don’t think this understanding takes into account the importance of the brand.

MN is a wholesome ‘village’ brand that appeals to women because it’s all about being supportive and creating a community we can lean on in times of need.

Being rude to your users / content creators undermines this and damages the brand.

So whilst it may work for some forums, I don’t agree it’s a good look here.

If MN was just a forum, perhaps it wouldn’t matter - but rudeness to the audience will put off the brands who sponsor content.

Again...with millions of content creators who are, essentially, completely anonymous...none of them actually matter.

You're still stuck on forum members being individuals, and MN being a brand. We might be to each other, in rare cases, but as far as forum management goes...we're not (and that goes counts doubly when the forum itself is a business on the scale of MN). All are commodities, as are most people on the Internet. Farmers don't ask the opinions of cattle, they just herd them in the direction they want them to go. And, just like cattle, the very nature of forums is that members a) are predictable en masse, and b) will rarely agree in numbers great enough to make any difference whatsoever; most people on forums are there for the same reason that they assemble their echo chambers on social media - to be given validation that they're right by as many people as possible, and to tell everyone who disagrees that they're wrong. This is the modern Internet, and MN is no different to anywhere else.

As for MN being a brand...that doesn't really matter all that much to most of its members, because they're here for the conversation. The brand matters to sponsors and investors, sure, but as long as a brusque communication to members doesn't result in people leaving in their droves (see "commodities" above), they don't really care about that either.

No, I’m not.

I’m saying that insulting the audience isn’t a good look to advertisers. Admittedly it’s relatively low risk if the consternation stays on site, but if it makes the news, it can damage the brand.

Reputation does matter - see MN moving all the very strong anti-trans stuff to a niche area of the site.

I agree that they don’t care about users on an individual level, but retaining a good level of users and a positive identity is essential.

Now, perhaps you are right that MN is now too big to fail, and any of us who leave over this will either slink back or be replaced, but straying too far from the wholesome, community vibe could be its downfall.

Not that I personally care - I won’t be here once the cookies thing is implemented - and won’t use any site that insists on them. Occasionally have to read the mirror or similar for work, but am fastidious about clearing cookies etc. Won’t be arsed doing that to waste my life arguing with racists and anti-vaxxers on here 😂

Of course content creators are not anonymous. MNHQ have their email addressses

But Mumsnet doesn’t check the email address is valid! Mine is a junk throwaway which actually does work but is never checked. It’s the one I give to sites or people I don’t want to have it!

The app doesn't have any ads

The iOS app has ads. Stupid, stupid ads.

@Happysack - "Won’t be arsed doing that to waste my life arguing with racists and anti-vaxxers on here"

Well, yes. Of course, for some it's sport, which is the whole reason they're on here ;)

@JoyousGreyOrca - "Of course content creators are not anonymous. MNHQ have their email addressses"

No, you're missing the point. Aside from the technical fact that an email address doesn't uniquely identify a person on its own, I said "essentially...anonymous". There are so many members here that treating them as individuals is largely a futile endeavour as far as MNHQ are concerned; individual behaviour isn't particularly interesting to them, collective behaviour is. By that, I mean that it doesn't matter if one of them gets the hump and leaves...in fact, it doesn't even matter if a hundred or a thousand do, because that would still make no difference relative to natural annual churn; it would have to be tens of thousands to even make a ripple.

On that scale, it really doesn't matter if you annoy a few hundred people enough that they post on a thread like this and flounce from the site; that wouldn't even register as a minor issue.

@JaneJeffer oh weird mine doesn't have any!!

Lucky you @arlequin

@ntmdino how many members does MN have?

I don't know, but based on site traffic it should be in the millions.

It got about 8 million unique visitors per month three years ago, and for forums the membership is usually somewhere between 40% and 80% of that number, depending on how long the site's been running. My personal rough guess would be 3-5 million members.

If so, that puts it squarely in the cross-hairs of the most onerous parts of the Online Safety Act (the threshold for that is 700k users) - meaning it's treated exactly like Facebook, X et al. Get ready for age verification checks and algorithmic moderation, y'all...

I think @ntmdino is right. I've had experience of something similar from large financial institutions. Once you get into a position where the organisation reaches critical mass (whether that's numbers of users, or customers), a culture develops whereby it's not seen as necessary or worth the effort to provide a great service or courteous response to an individual. And that goes doubly for anyone who complains - if the user / customer flounces, so much the better.

They basically want as many users as possible clicking on things and accepting ads and cookies, but they don't value those users except as a conduit for receiving revenue from advertisers, and (to a lesser extent) paying subscribers who don't cause them any additional work.

This is all fair enough, perhaps, and at least we know where we stand. And subscribers will be paying less from now on, which is the good news.

Get ready for age verification checks and algorithmic moderation, y'all...
Given the amount of trolls on here even when registration is supposedly suspended I won't hold my breath for any checks

Those checks will be legally required - it's not optional, and for a for-profit site this well-known there won't be anywhere to hide; Ofcom won't even blink before fining MNHQ more money than it can afford.

They might've had a fighting chance before CSAM was posted here on Sunday, but not any more.

While we're talking about things that aren't a good look...can you imagine the headlines if Mumsnet went to court for breaching the Online Safety Act, which is supposed to be all about "protecting the children" and has full support across all political parties?

I’ve recently been getting MN Daily and MN discounts emails and although I’ve clicked on the unsubscribe links I’m still not unsubscribed.
If anyone from MNHQ sees this can you assist please?

@ntmdino thanks for the background info re OSA and forum functioning

I don't really want to pay for a site which for me is just fun (and I'm not impressed with their previous security issues), so I don't really care that much about accepting ads.

However, most places where accepting ads is necessary for 'free' use give me the option of accepting or rejecting additional cookies for 'personalised' ads. It seems (I may be wrong) that MN has skipped that bit and is pushing the 'personalised' ads on everyone without proper consent. Is that covered anywhere in OSA, or is that back to the ICO again?

That'd be an ICO issue - tracking cookies aren't covered anywhere in the OSA. With that said, the GDPR only says that it must be just as easy to reject third-party cookies as it is to accept them; it doesn't say that sites can't charge for access in the case of cookie rejection (quite rightly, if you think about it - the GDPR can't legally mandate a business model).

In my opinion, they'd be far better off disabling image uploads site-wide (thus mitigating part of the OSA that deals with uploads), but still allowing it for subscribed users. That's a much better incentive than just going ad-free, because anybody can do that with a free browser extension. On top of that, it makes the job of moderating uploaded images much more manageable.

Sure, there'd be a bunch of pissed-off users that have to upload their images elsewhere and then embed them for a while, but they'll eventually quiet down...and the ones who really want that functionality will subscribe.

That would at least be logical.

Thanks ntmdino

There is nothing on earth that would entice me to subscribe