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.”

I can’t post a screenshot so I’m going to replicate the pop up that I saw here (square brackets indicate a blue button):

Mumsnet is ad funded

Read for free
[Accept].

Pay to remove Ads
[Reject & subscribe]

Already a Premium User? Login

(In small font, pale grey colour) We and our 181 partners use cookies and similar technologies to store and process personal data, such as unique identifiers and browsing activity, to personalise your experience and advertising.
You can update your preferences or withdraw consent at any time via "Privacy settings" at the bottom of each page. For more details, see our Privacy Policy.

—————-

Then they have dropdowns that explain the various cookie permutations and data processing activities.

Do you see? Cookies are not mentioned before the opportunity to click “Accept”.

It goes on to say you can withdraw consent to cookies. What it is missing is a statement along the lines of “By clicking to accept ads you are also clicking to accept cookies and all previous settings will be overridden.”

I was already accepting them so I don’t know what would have happened here had I had them turned off and clicked “Accept” but I can tell you this- if clicking “Accept” was an automatic change to existing cookie settings it would fail the legal test for transparency. Especially when they are telling people that they can update their preferences themselves.

Also, I am not a 'content creator' or 'the product'. I occasionally moan about things. I mostly read other people's posts. I don't think my dumb posts mean I somehow get to tell mumsnet how to run its business

If you disagree then use incognito mode to browse.

It's not really a big deal, imo. MN have to make money somehow.

This debate about whether the value of a website comes from the owner or the users is not new or unique to this forum.

The next step is for Justine Mumsnet to sell the site for millions of pounds, get a TV show and the forum goes to the dogs.

curse you Martin Lewis

Sorry to tell you Icognito mode does not prevent fingerprinting.

Half the threads appear to be "promoted by Mumsnet" at the moment. I could do with out that!

Interested to hear your thoughts on the transparency of the popup? I agree that the MN announcement on site stuff is clear but it doesn’t seem to be matched by the popup.

I think it's poor that it's not made transparently, obviously clear what it means in that pop-up. I accepted because I just thought it was consent for ads in general, not consent for non-essential cookies. Some people don't care, that's fine, but I and many others do. Data harvesting is a problematic issue, and I don't think it's good practice to just usher more and more acceptance of data collecting just because most people don't understand the implications.

If they want my data, they should pay me for it. I refuse to be profit fodder.

So OP do you worry about your social media platforms or shopping sites too?

I can't answer for OP but I care about those things. I always choose to reject non-essential cookies.

Likewise. I suspect most people do these days or at least anyone with any understanding of what cookies are.

I know and I don’t blame them.

I own my own business and I don’t give my services away for free. Why would Mumsnet?

Also the list of trending threads has vanished, for me anyway

If they care about here it's likely they do on every site they use.

pretty sure i still rejected tracking, just had to open up the read more on legitimate interests and under small print. reject all is still there.

Well the digitalfinger prints MN collects are cross browser and identify your specific device. So after you have visited MN and your data has been shared to its clients and data it sells you continue to have your data harvested with your unique id across all platforms.

Hence why people oftern say, oh I was thinking about baby buggies last week or mentioned them on MN and now they appear as adds on every place I go.

Yes lots of people getting very carried away by this shocking development of <whispers it> either pay or accept cookies.

I'd be interested, with all the threat of deregging across multiple threads if mn do actually see any flouncing, somehow I doubt it.

Disclaimer I absolutely understand that the recent incident re images was shocking but the constant attacks and mocking of mn does seem a tad disproportionate. Stay, go, I doubt it'll make the slightest difference.

This was in reply to the user who asked what hapoened overnight. The quote function didn't work.

Some sicko spammed the site with child abuse images

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93qw3lw4kvo

The overnight moderators were overwhelmed and struggled to take it down quick enough. And they also had to look at the horrendous images.

A failure to protect both users and moderators

Ahhh that's a good suggestion! Ta

Reallty? I mean I have seen a thousand threads on the subject but always room for more..

Doesn’t bother me. They have to make money

Someone asked what happened. I replied.

That's up to you I won't be giving away any money to a miser who won't employ proper staff at night. They are lucky it's not in the papers what poor people saw the other night. Shocking and people give their money to them? That's even more shocking.

Edit: it reached the news good that's what happens when you don't invest.

I can't quote for some reason now but we might type reams of relative crap day in and day out but we don't own it. We have no control over what happens to it once we've said it. If it makes users feel better to think they are a key product of this site then think away.

I'm smiling to myself about the 'expertise'. AIBU is the biggest 'draw' to the site and is filled with the most ridiculous tripe. The specialist boards (which I don't use) are where the expertise probably lives.