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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

@Binterested

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.

I'm not minimising it - I'm trying to get the facts straight as there's a lot of misunderstanding of what actually happened as I see it.

It is absolutely not true that you can just hide FWR and so not see any of the endless trans discussions on MN.

The discussions are about the wide-ranging impacts on women's dex based rights and the Safeguarding of children & vulnerable adults.

Given they mostly take place on the feminism & women's rights board of a parenting website its not unsurprising that members posting there are interested & concerned.

Many new to the issues have found this thread useful:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

Funny how they will kowtow to the TRAs, shitting all over their actual, loyal members, but when they need money it's US they want to put our hands in our pockets.

Another excellent point. Maybe MNHQ should set up a patreon account, then cream it in from all the TRAs who seem to love them so much, rather than handle filthy nasty women's money

JustineMumsnet

Thats exactly the problem.

Your staff screenshot private data and shared it on twitter. You call this an accident.

Now youre asking us to provide bank details.

What has been put in place to ensure these "accidents" dont happen again?

I've subscribed because I think MN is hugely important, especially the FWR board.

But I would like you to reconsider allowing TRAs to either report without joining, or join, fail to contribute and then report. I think moderation should be on the basis of active members' views or you're allowing people who contribute nothing to game the system.

You are minimising. She didn’t mean it. It was unprofessional. It was disappointing...

No one cares how you all feel about it. What matters is how your users view it and your use of words reflects your own mindset not theirs.

You need to say you / she massively screwed up and will learn from it and never let it happen again.

Sorry to talk so bluntly but I am a business owner too and I would never communicate with any of my stakeholders like this. I also wouldn’t accuse them of ‘haranguing’ which was another misstep imho. I agree with a pp. You need better comms advice. And a better lawyer.

@PheasantPlucker1

JustineMumsnet

Thats exactly the problem.

Your staff screenshot private data and shared it on twitter. You call this an accident.

Now youre asking us to provide bank details.

What has been put in place to ensure these "accidents" dont happen again?

No... I call the screenshot of the post on Mumsnet deliberate. The fact that it included an IP address in teeny little digits at the bottom of image was an accident. Leaking data was not the reason the post was copied. I realise I'm being a bit pedantic but it is simply wrong to say this was a deliberate data breach. It was childish and unprofessional to screengrab and post a derogatory comment about the community of a former employer but not a deliberate attempt to dox.

OK - I must been really stupid because some things I just don’t understand.
Why wasn’t there a decent contingency plan - a few years ago there was the mass hack of U.K. sites that meant so much internet usage was at risk, that must have been a wake up call to have someone place. And making a loss last quarter - are you trying to tell us that all has been hunky dorey up until this point? That the business model has been fine until last quarter and only in the last three months have things got that bad that you have to ask people to subscribe to a service that even yourselves cannot say what exactly you are getting other than fewer ads and potentially a 15 second edit button? And are banks really making decisions about Q4 in the beginning of Q2 ie the loan deferment this quickly?

I know - none of this is my business how a private company runs but if it’s asking for money from people who give it its raw materials free of change to make money from........

I think a lot of posters are giving MNHQ a hard time over all the TRA/FWR issues when the reality is they aren't an issue that is unique to MN exist only on MN, but are symptomatic of a far wider organised politicised movement that has it's own sinister agenda. Rather than trying to fight the battle by proxy on MN, it should be "taken outside" and pursued through all channels with great vigour.

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

This 'intervention' was just prior to the data breech & blog being published.

1/04/2018
Emma Healey twitter comment to one of the NUS facilitators / creator of the PP slideshow: "I’ve got my friends who still work at MN to report it all, so hopefully will get taken down. They’re absolute transphobic scum. I’m so sorry!"

Thread in question- discussing slideshow by male facilitators of workshop at NUS Women's Conference, 'How To Deal with TERFS'
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3222263-Slide-show-on-How-to-Deal-with-TERFs?pg=2#prettyPhoto/0/

“My friends who still work at MN”
How are we supposed to be reassured it was a ‘mistake’? She wasn’t working alone, was she?

Justine you really need some PR, there's a reason that companies use them and pay well for them, - because they aren't as invested as the CEOs and the business owners and managers they are much better at dealing with the public (even though it may sound counter intuitive there's a lot of psychology at play here) for example you are on here trying to engage with your customers, probably because you think it's more grounded and authentic but it's not working unfortunately Justine because you are (understandably) so personally invested you are defensive which is the number one no no for dealing with people you are trying to encourage to invest in your brand.

Is there any way, Justine and any tecky people, to be able to pay a subscription without giving personal details.

HQ will be targeted, stripe will be targeted. If there was a way of contributing without any personal details, at all, it would save all this hassle and worry.

I agree with Datun. I would happily just contribute to a one-off fund.

@FreeKitties has a point. MN has moved on since its early days when it was all green fields around a kitchen table, people paid for the use of private messages, and they would bung you a fiver here and there to help keep the lights on. It's too big for that now.

Wow.

I didn’t know any of this stuff about MN employees trying to expose people’s private personal data for malicious reasons.

It’s absolutely terrifying.

Are MN members aware that their personal data is at risk? Could it fall into the wrong hands and be used to hack my phone, my private e-mail, my contacts, my bank accounts? I’m now seriously asking myself if it’s safe to use this site at all .

Tbh someone spinning the same message wouldn’t change the ask for me. I’d still think nope.

But I agree being defensive probably isn’t best stance.

Are MN members aware that their personal data is at risk?

Any data you post anywhere should be considered at risk. After all no amount of promises can go back and undo a breach. There have been too many examples of data breaches for anyone anywhere to be able to claim security (including and especially the government). And finally, in the UK, data protection isn't really something companies feel they need to take seriously anyway. Or, to rephrase that, you can count on the fingers of no hands how many people have been recompensed when their data has been leaked.

This. How can MN employ 100 people and have no one that does PR and employ no one in IT to make the site look like it's been written within the last decade?

There were much better examples of forum software around in 2010 ...

Age find a throwaway email address and use that to create a membership, and make up the info on your profile. I've deleted membership and rejoined a couple of times following breaches.

For this reason I wouldn't sign up to something involving bank details, not after the Internee disaster, but would very happily contribute a donation.

Mn have been asked to guarantee it won’t happen again after every data breach. Not going to happen!

HQ will be targeted, stripe will be targeted. If there was a way of contributing without any personal details, at all, it would save all this hassle and worry.

This ^^

After every data breach it's like giggle giggle, whoopsie!

That's not specific to any individual site though - they're all like that.