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.”

@GutsyTurtle
I don't generally use Chrome, but on my Android phone you click the 3 dots at the top on the right. Then "settings". Then "privacy and security". Then "third party cookies" click & choose "block third-party cookies".
Go back to "privacy & security" and click "Ads privacy" and you can go through & turn off each of the 3 options (if you want).
Go back to "privacy & security" again and click "Send a do not track request" & turn on (not all websites abide by it but no harm in doing it).

If you've already accepted cookies from MN Go back to "privacy & security" yet again and click "delete browsing data". On the top towards the right choose the period of time you want to delete cookies for (varies from "last 15 minutes" to "all time"). Click the box for "cookies & site data" and it will delete them. Now you're finished with the settings.
-Be aware though if you clear cookies it will log you out of everything, so if your passwords aren't saved to the browser (not sure if/where Chrome does this) then make a note of them before clearing cookies so you can log in again afterwards.

Then follow what I said from "To opt out of cookies all together..." down to the "log in to the site..." which will apply to any browser (uBlock origin ad blocker is just for Firefox).

Hope that makes sense.

Thank you so much @JellyTotsAreYum

So 71% didn’t know about MN’s proposed changes, or think it’s not unreasonable to think MNers won’t be aware.

Presumanly MN is happy with that as they’ve done nothing to make the changes more visible.

Having invited questions on the Site Stuff thread, their last “please bear with us” post was last Wednesday. It’s not a picture of professionalism.

I am very grateful to you for highlighting this @OldChairMan

You’re very very welcome. Whatever the pros and cons, any significant changes should be adequately publicised and explained clearly to us all.

I read the pop up and the site stuff thread - not sure how others have missed this.

Did you not get a pop up when it changed? I did, and had to click 'okay' or accept or whatever. If you don't read things before confirming you agree to it nobody else can really help with that.

I still don't understand what I need to worry about?
I know some people seem to object on principle.
But most newspapers etc have done the same recently.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
The advertising pays for the site. That's what I thought.
So to avoid it you have to pay.
I don't mind it that much. I don't pay.
If I am putting myself in some real jeopardy thereby I'd like to know.

Strange way to look at it.

You, like the rest of us, are providing free content for the site.

The only real costs to MN are running the site so they can monetise the content that you provide, plus now your data.

Where does this happen? I've never seen anything at all and didn't even know you could pay for ad free.

Interesting programme about this on radio 4 today 12.30 lunchtime.

As I pointed out a few pages ago...it costs much more than you think to run a site like this, and your content only has even a small amount of value when it's aggregated with the content from a few hundred thousand other people.

That's why the majority of blogs are utterly worthless wastes of storage and bandwidth, but social media sites (including forums) are generally worth a lot more.

...and that's if you generously ignore the fact that 99% of the content on any forum, but particularly this one, is utter drivel. The highest-traffic areas on here are where people go to piss and moan about other people...that's hardly high-value content.

Have you shared the annual profit made on this forum of drivel, piss and moaning, @ntmdino?

I didn't say it couldn't make money. I just said that it costs money, as you well know ;)

Well someone posted an annual profit of approx 2 million, not sure how recent that was though.

Sounds about right, to be honest.

You can do a lot with one person - a forum with about 100k visitors/month, 5k regulars and probably 4-5 million requests/month would just about be do-able with one tech and a couple of volunteers. Much past that, and the scaling requires a proper team and real investment, and you can't get that without a significant demonstrable profit.

MN are, obviously, a couple of orders of magnitude over those numbers.

Is that you, Justine?!

"High-value content" or not, it draws eye-balls.

Eyeballs draw adverts.

Adverts make cash.

There's a lot more advertising on this site that there was years ago, so I think the company must be doing ok.

Charging to avoid cookies is a relatively new trend amongst websites - people will have noticed it on the trashier newspapers etc.

Just another way to rinse customers; after all, that's all modern business is about - shareholder value and C-class executive pay prioritised above all else.

Modern-day capitalism - rinse suppliers, customers and staff as much as possible at all times.

Nobody is obliged to stay on here if they're not happy. The door isn't locked.

LOL, no...my side-hustle is running a forum that's pretty big in its niche (but not even close to this one), and I have many years of experience running and developing enterprise-scale sites for my various employers.

The problem with your logic is that you're considering forum members as customers or suppliers; you're neither in this context. In fact, we're all a commodity...in terms of modern Internet economics, you're either paying for the service you're using or you're its product. To believe otherwise is delusion as to the importance of individuals.

The beauty of doing that with a forum is that there's so much disagreement over everything (that's what makes a forum work) that you'll never find enough of the members agreeing on something that they'll be able to force you to change your strategy. Sure, when a forum is small (<5k members), you need to play nicely with the membership; once you hit critical mass, though, they cease to matter on an individual basis because it starts to become exponentially more difficult for a few of them to break away and start a competitor that represents an actual threat.

MN is so far past that point that nothing can realistically shift it, either in terms of strategy or market position.

Basically, the options are "suck it up" or "move to a much, much smaller community" if any of us don't like what they're doing.

99% of the content on any forum, but particularly this one, is utter drivel. The highest-traffic areas on here are where people go to piss and moan about other people...that's hardly high-value content.

Um..... I cannot imagine Justine would run down her own site like this. Lol.

Anyone know if I am being tracked if I selected do not track when I downloaded the app a while ago, but their t&cs have now changed? I assume if I were to delete and reinstall id be forced to pay or consent, but I've not had that option yet?

To be fair, I've been known to say that about my own forum.

Perhaps that's why this is a multi-million-pound enterprise and mine barely pays for itself :D

I don't disagree that most of the content is piss and drivel, Justine is making huge amounts of money out of old rope, old rope provided for free by us.

Here I am spending my time providing piss and drivel so that Justine can get richer!
Damn 🤪. . . I'm going to go on my Kindle app and read a book instead🤓

I think that if you go to the original thread, Becky @MN has answered this at 2.32pm today. I'll try to link.

Introducing Pay or Consent on Mumsnet http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/5268190-introducing-pay-or-consent-on-mumsnet?msgid=142444150#142444150

ETA: that actually just links to the thread, @hjfoau. The reply you want is currently almost the last on there.