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Mumsnet Premium membership - please support us if you can

999 replies

JustineMumsnet · 08/04/2020 13:17

Hi folks,

First and most importantly, I hope you and yours are safe and well, and that you all stay that way.

After 20 years of unreasonableness, rofls, wtfs, advice and support, and the odd lawsuit, it's fair to say that we are as close as we’ve ever been to existential difficulty.

Like many ad-funded businesses, the COVID-19 crisis has seen us take a big hit to our revenues. The businesses who would normally pay to advertise with us are slashing their marketing budgets, but lots of our outgoings are fixed and we so need to find new ways to keep paying the bills.

We’re doing our darndest to find every single saving we can - lots of our staff have volunteered to reduce their hours, we’ve cancelled all non-essential services, I've taken a pay holiday and we will use every scheme and loan available to us from the government and the bank to help tide us over. But we still need to find alternative revenue streams to ensure we don’t run out of funds in a few months...

To put it frankly, it’s squeaky bum time.

I know this is a very tough time for many of you and some of you are only just keeping the lights on yourselves. We’re sending you our solidarity and we most certainly don’t want anyone to stump up anything they can’t afford, but if you can help, please do subscribe now to our Premium service.

We’ve banged this out as fast as possible in response to the current crisis and it’s definitely not the finished article, but it’s free of banner advertising, so if you’ve ever been vexed by those (or use an ad-blocker) this might be right up your alley. Banner ads also tend to make pages render more slowly and take up bandwidth, so if you’re surrounded by bored kids streaming with their mates, step this way.

We’ve opted for a price point that we hope is doable for most and which covers the potential lost ad revenue for the majority of users. We hope £4.99 per month or £49.99 for a year (less than a pound a week!) feels a reasonable exchange for the value Mumsnet brings you, but in any case you can unsubscribe any time.

Over the next little while we’ll look to add some extra features: things that people have requested regularly like editing, sorting posts by the OP, and reading offline.

Rest assured we remain committed to always providing a free version of the site, as we fundamentally believe that access to the advice and support Mumsnet offers should not depend on your ability to pay.

And if you can’t spare any cash right now… then of course we get it. It would still be very helpful if you removed any ad blockers or clicked on affiliate links around the site when you shop, joined our insight panel or even shared the best Mumsnet threads on your social channels whenever you can - it all helps.

If you have any questions at all feel free to post them here and I'll get back to you. We also have a page of FAQs that might answer your question.

Hold tight everyone.

Love

Justine and the team at MNHQ

OP posts:
Thread gallery
7
ThrowingGoodAfterBad · 09/04/2020 11:43

I’ve thought about it. No. Plenty other companies in worse states, plenty of charities asking for help in similar amounts. Are mumsnet employees, these ‘highly skilled people’, charity cases? I also don’t like the lies that have come out here, the censorship, or where this might go once you’ve established the principle of users paying to receive content given to you for free while being profiled and sold too.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 09/04/2020 11:43

I ain't stopping nobody :)

Binterested · 09/04/2020 11:51

I think some advertisers have probably pulled out because of FWR. But that’s because MNHQ have hedged their bets. They’ve tacitly accepted that calling people with penises men is transphobic. As opposed to truthful.

They won’t stand up and present a massive forum of women speaking truthfully to each other as a good thing. They’ve been craven and tried to appease the MRAs at our expense and it doesn’t work.

There is space for a massive forum of women who share honestly with each other on subjects ranging from new prams to racism to vaginal prolapse to pop to abusive relationships to happy relationships. All of these are spoken about truthfully and candidly on here and advertisers buy into that . All apart from the ‘women with penises’ issue where we are monitored, controlled and gaslighted - with the collusion of MNHQ.

My argument is that MNHQ should stand up for their business model. It’s a model built on sharing, communication and honesty between women. This is very appealing to many advertisers. MNHQ need to have the courage to stand up for their model and for women.

Destroyer · 09/04/2020 11:55

I had a thread deleted* because 'it wasn’t in the spirit of the site'. A week later, there were dozens more saying the same thing - I was just ahead of the curve. It puts me off feeling like subscribing.

  • (under a different account - I change quite often nowadays due to all the security problems they’ve had, which asks a question in itself, as I wouldn’t be able to do this anymore)
Skittlesss · 09/04/2020 11:55

All this reference to companies house... I had a look and don’t understand it Blush

MNHQ
soniamumsnet · 09/04/2020 12:01

Hi @Holdingmybreath,

Sorry you're having problems with the site - we'll email you in a minute and try to get to the bottom of it for you. Smile

PertEllaTitsahoy · 09/04/2020 12:04

What's that saying... go woke, go broke..?

Maybe pandering to the wokebeards wasnt such a great choice, huh? You pissed off a lot of your content providers and still they arent happy.

ReallyLoveChickens · 09/04/2020 12:04

What's that they say about doors on the way out

Just no need is there Sad

CruCru · 09/04/2020 12:11

Done!

MNHQ
JustineMumsnet · 09/04/2020 12:11

@MrsNoah2020

You have been hacked before but I wasn’t concerned as my personal details are not linked to a card. I would have been very worried if they had

Actually it was worse than being hacked: a member of their staff had access to data and chose to leak it. MN's response was to downplay massively - a big mistake, which is now coming back to bite them as poster after poster raises data protection concerns.

Hi - I don't think it's quite the full picture to say that this employee "chose to leak" data. The intern in question put a screengrab of MN post that she'd made when employed at MN on Twitter. Because she had an admin view of the post at the time she took the screengrab, this post also showed an IP address (something that is no longer the case).

Obviously it was not good that she screen-grabbed the post when in our employment in order to potentially publish it to suit her own ends at a later date but it wasn't her intention to leak the IP address - it's was in tiny text at the bottom of the post and very easy to miss - it was accidental.

She was in fact distraught about her mistake, deleted the post immediately and no other data was compromised besides that one IP address very briefly.

Tbh any organisation is going to make some bad hiring decisions. We've taken every step to improve our training and our recruitment as much as we can but we are as vulnerable to bad apples as anyone else.

OP posts:
BigChocFrenzy · 09/04/2020 12:12

"Please no "Badges", "Awards", "post-ratings", etc. on Mumsnet"

^ This

I know many MNers have nursery or primary age children, but this sounds like sticker charts for grownups

TodaysNameChange · 09/04/2020 12:17

Obviously it was not good that she screen-grabbed the post when in our employment in order to potentially publish it to suit her own ends at a later date but it wasn't her intention to leak the IP address - it's was in tiny text at the bottom of the post and very easy to miss - it was accidental.

No disrespect, but that could have been written to avoid disclosing the gender sex or whatever of the culprit. Isn't that what "they" and "their" were invented for ?

BigChocFrenzy · 09/04/2020 12:18

"I think some advertisers have probably pulled out because of FWR."

Any decisions because of FWR
would be totally insignificant compared to the massive crash in ad budgets by most businesses
due to the CV emergency

It makes commercial sense to look for alternative continuing revenue rather than a brief one-off flurry of donations:

We are entering a Global Recession / Depression, so this crash in ad revenue will likely continue for several months
and may take several years to return to the previous "normal"

PertEllaTitsahoy · 09/04/2020 12:19

What was that about downplaying?

Pelleas · 09/04/2020 12:20

HotelBravo That's a really good point. There would be the potential for huge savings if MNHQ moved away from the London and South East area.

NotBadConsidering · 09/04/2020 12:21

No disrespect, but that could have been written to avoid disclosing the gender sex or whatever of the culprit. Isn't that what "they" and "their" were invented for?

Why? It’s public knowledge:

www.theguardian.com/media/2018/apr/19/mumsnet-reports-itself-data-regulator-transgender-rights-row-ip-addresses-posted-twitter

Regardless of the intentions, the screenshots were being collected because the person in question didn’t like the way posters were discussing things.

BigChocFrenzy · 09/04/2020 12:22

I'd hope that every MN employment contract now includes specific warnings that any FUCKING DOXER will be sacked immediately and sued for damages whenever possible

MarshaBradyo · 09/04/2020 12:22

BigChoc is right it has absolutely nothing to do with FWR. Most advertisers will be slashing budgets across the board. Wages even and that’s after furlough and redundancies.
SM advertising is a flippancy anyway.

If you look on IG you’ll see various people trying to rake in money in other ways now.

MNHQ
JustineMumsnet · 09/04/2020 12:24

@Binterested

I think some advertisers have probably pulled out because of FWR. But that’s because MNHQ have hedged their bets. They’ve tacitly accepted that calling people with penises men is transphobic. As opposed to truthful.

They won’t stand up and present a massive forum of women speaking truthfully to each other as a good thing. They’ve been craven and tried to appease the MRAs at our expense and it doesn’t work.

There is space for a massive forum of women who share honestly with each other on subjects ranging from new prams to racism to vaginal prolapse to pop to abusive relationships to happy relationships. All of these are spoken about truthfully and candidly on here and advertisers buy into that . All apart from the ‘women with penises’ issue where we are monitored, controlled and gaslighted - with the collusion of MNHQ.

My argument is that MNHQ should stand up for their business model. It’s a model built on sharing, communication and honesty between women. This is very appealing to many advertisers. MNHQ need to have the courage to stand up for their model and for women.

The thing I think that this argument (which I appreciate has been posted several times on this thread) misses, is that not all Mumsnetters agree with the received wisdom on the FWR forums that we should be more robust in our stand. In fact many have expressed concern that the tone on the FWR boards towards Trans people is unpleasant and unnecessary. It's not as simple as you're not standing up for the women of Mumsnet. The women of Mumsnet (rather than just a board on Mumsnet) do not all have the same position. We have tread an, admittedly tortuous at times, line of allowing debate of the issue but trying to keep the tone respectful. That does entail taking people's feelings into account, as well as doing our best to keep censorship to the minimum. I've no doubt we're inconsistent sometimes but moderation of this hasn't been an easy task.

One thing is for absolute sure though it costs us much more to run FWR (both in terms of moderation effort, legal costs and loss in ad revs) than we make in ad revenue from it. The reason we do it isn't for profit it's because we believe there should be somewhere mainstream where these issues can be debated.

OP posts:
MrsNoah2020 · 09/04/2020 12:25

What was that about downplaying

Grin
Astrabees · 09/04/2020 12:29

No. Much as I find Mumsnet entertaining and informative I think it should be a free resource. I hardly notice the ads and I'm sure MN is an attractive proposition to advertisers who want access to a largely affluent middle class market. This week I have had appeals for Syrian refugees, a dog rescue centre and a horse sanctuary i think they are all more urgent appeals and have given to them.

BitOfFun · 09/04/2020 12:30

I'm happy to subscribe- mumsnet has been here for me for 17 years, and I feel very loyal to it.

I wonder if those on the mythical "six figure incomes" will pony up? Grin.

Pelleas · 09/04/2020 12:30

not all Mumsnetters agree with the received wisdom on the FWR forums that we should be more robust in our stand

Well said, Justine.

MNHQ
JustineMumsnet · 09/04/2020 12:30

@TodaysNameChange

Obviously it was not good that she screen-grabbed the post when in our employment in order to potentially publish it to suit her own ends at a later date but it wasn't her intention to leak the IP address - it's was in tiny text at the bottom of the post and very easy to miss - it was accidental.

No disrespect, but that could have been written to avoid disclosing the gender sex or whatever of the culprit. Isn't that what "they" and "their" were invented for ?

I think the identity of the culprit is well and truly out. - she outed herself when she posted the screengrab on Twitter and she's been named on this thread too...

OP posts:
HotelBravo · 09/04/2020 12:35

Users can hide FWR, as well as any other topic they don't like. I hide a few topics myself. What I do t do, is demand the topics bend to suit my own personal sensibilities. Nobody needs to be in FWR getting offended unless they chose to be there.