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[JustineMumsnet]

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

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.

It seems that the whole of Mumsnet costs more to run than the revenue generated.

FWR is the third most visited board, right?

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.

@JustineMumsnet

I really can not express how happy I am to read this.
I might not completely agree with the subscription but thank you for this. Thank you so so much. I respect you for coming out and saying this.

Doesn't mean you should force women to lie or have to commit verbal gymnastics just to make a statement which is true just because someone might be offended.

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.

This.

Is Netmums charging or have they got their business model under control?

I mean, the fact that you can't post on your own forum without it becoming a discussion about FWR shows how important it is.
Every web chat goes the same way.

Women want to be free to speak the truth, without deletions, strikes, banning.

If moderating women is so onerous, stop doing it and let us talk without you.

Justine Emma Healey taking photos of members personal data, keeping it for several months then posting it on twitter was not a mistake.

It wasnt a slip of the thumb.

It was deliberate, and illegal.

I think its actually hilarious youre asking people to give you bank details while still defending your staffs illegal activities with our personal data

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

I’m sure some posters would like you to take a firmer line on many things but you do not. We can say what we think and be considered unpleasant or not on a range of topics. Honest discussion is at the heart of everything you do. Dissent is tolerated across the board. Except on FWR where you force me to describe some men as women and that is coerced speech. Please do tell us where else on the board you force people to say things that they consider to be untrue ? I have no wish to be unpleasant but you want me to talk about ‘her penis’ and I cannot accept that. And you have missed my point - by pandering to the targeted reports you fail to represent the core value of Mumsnet which for me is honest and open debate. As I’ve said before - honesty, sometimes brutal, is at the heart of Mumsnet. AIBU. LTB. It’s your core value. You undermine it and you undermine your brand.

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

That doesn’t address the amount of traffic that comes via FWR which you have told us previously is significant. But if you want to close FWR down then do. We’ll find somewhere else. And you’ll lose some of the best and most active boards on this site. And some incredible women. Your business model - own it.

Whatever my general feelings on this, I do agree with Justine re FWR and I have it hidden for that reason.

The problem is that it’s not uncommon for someone to post in aibu saying “I posted this in FWR but since people have it hidden I felt it important to post it here as well.”

Also constantly turning every discussion into one which ends up in talking about pronouns gives a very real tone to the reasons why FWR is so unpopular.it might be one of the most visited boards, but iirc it’s also the most hidden one.

It would be interesting to ssee, if MN made only FWR subscription, how many users would actually subscribe to it.

The argument re gender issues is a valid one, but the problem is that there is too much bile on both sides which means a meaningful discussion has become impossible.

On the one side you have people saying “but you are transphobic, trans men or women should be allowed to have the same rights,” etc, and on the other side you have people saying “I refuse to call someone with a penis a woman,” There are ways of having the conversation which shouldn’t involve name calling and bile on either side, and that is where FWR gets it wrong and is so much of the reason why so many give it a wide birth.

So the former employee made a "mistake" - a bit like the (former) chief medical officer in Scotland then?
It was gross professional misconduct (in both cases) not a mistake

Shall I head over to the 'Chestfeeding' board? Better make sure nobody is referring to breasts, wombs, vaginas etc.

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.

Why though? Why does it require more moderation effort? Who is doing the reporting Justine? Why did you implement special rules that would mean extra moderation? Why does it cost more legally? Who is making legal complaints, people identifying as lawyers per chance?

If people don’t like what’s said in FWR, they don’t have to read it. If you want less work from it in terms of moderation stop allowing people from Twitter to coordinate their mates to come and report, remove the special rules that require hard work from posters to get their language acceptable and hardworking moderators to try and see if the vexatious reporter has a point about a poster’s language being unacceptable and just moderate from a legal perspective - libel etc. Much easier all round for everyone.

But I won’t pay while it’s still uncertain why we can call Karen White “he” but not other such males, and I get moderated for describing surgery accurately. Sorry. I know it’s a fine line for you, strike a balance, nice to everyone etc, but it’s my credit card, and I won’t pay to be told off for speaking the truth.

@PheasantPlucker1

Justine Emma Healey taking photos of members personal data, keeping it for several months then posting it on twitter was not a mistake.

It wasnt a slip of the thumb.

It was deliberate, and illegal.

I think its actually hilarious youre asking people to give you bank details while still defending your staffs illegal activities with our personal data

I'm making a distinction between two different things:
Her deliberate copying and pasting of a publicly available MN post which wasn't illegal or a data breach but was certainly disappointing and unprofessional.

And secondly her posting of personal data in the form of the IP address - which was accidental and immediately withdrawn. The ICO incidentally took no steps against her. I'm not saying what she did was without blame. But it wasn't a deliberate data breach as it was described.

Alternativeperspective the example you have chosen of feminist "bile" is the refusal to call someone with a penis a woman? Seriously? I would imagine frequent posters to FWR would be among the most concerned about having their data leaked, given recent events in the real world. Not that I'd particularly want my mil to read in the daily mail what I posted about her in 2017, linked to my real name, either.

Sack half of your staff. Hire a lawyer, and get them to train you in what actually counts as hate speech etc.

You will find that your moderation workload goes down to the low 0.0 %'s.

If FWR was subscription only and the ridiculous moderation rules were relaxed, I'd subscribe. But I won't subscribe where comments and threads are deleted or vanished for pointing out that you can't self identify into or out of the sex observed at birth.

It is absolutely not true that you can just hide FWR and so not see any of the endless trans discussions on MN. People post threads on other boards (often with deliberately misleading titles), they also derail other discussions, most significantly by making any chat session with any vaguely political figure unworkable because it gets flooded by questions on trans issues.

Justine your minimising of the data debacle is not the right approach at the same time as you are asking for support. Again. Your business. Own it.

Users can hide FWR, as well as any other topic they don't like

Not exactly true - even if you have the board hidden, you can still get suckered in by the bloody trending topics sidebar, there doesn't seem to be any way of switching that off!

It is absolutely not true that you can just hide FWR and so not see any of the endless trans discussions on MN. People post threads on other boards (often with deliberately misleading titles), they also derail other discussions, most significantly by making any chat session with any vaguely political figure unworkable because it gets flooded by questions on trans issues

I think what’s actually happening is that you’re slowly coming to the realisation that defending women’s sex-based rights pervades all aspects of life, and the topic pervading all forums on MN is just the analogy. You can’t hide from it, because every aspect of life is impacted by it, so it’s unreasonable to expect the topic not to spill over into other areas of MN too.

Seeing awful, personal threads about yourself can't be nice

I'm sure it can't, though no doubt a point could be made about expectations when someone's chosen to make themselves a public figure

In common with so many it's not the rules about "personal remarks" I have an issue with, but the arbitrary way they're applied. There'll always be different views among mods when it comes to subjective decisions, but all too often the inconsistencies are glaring

JustineMumsnet Emma Healey copied the data as admin, not as user. Why?

She kept hold of it for several months, for future use. Why, when it was all still vailable to view to anyone?

There was never any answer, just cries of poor Emma didnt mean it.

Emma herself admitted in the original post she had kept admin data to share.

I think your stance on defending staff over your users may come back to bite you in the arse now you need money off the same users you screwed over!

Ok, so what if MNHQ used user-mods? That's what happened with Local.

In honesty I think your PR team should spend less time selling stories into the Daily Fail and more time looking at how to address the glaring issues others have raised on here/helping advise you on how best to communicate this new offering.

@PheasantPlucker1

JustineMumsnet Emma Healey copied the data as admin, not as user. Why?

She kept hold of it for several months, for future use. Why, when it was all still vailable to view to anyone?

There was never any answer, just cries of poor Emma didnt mean it.

Emma herself admitted in the original post she had kept admin data to share.

I think your stance on defending staff over your users may come back to bite you in the arse now you need money off the same users you screwed over!

She kept a post. She screengrabbed it when she was logged in as an admin.