Introducing Pay or Consent on Mumsnet

[BeckyAMumsnet]

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:

1. Continue for free with cookies and ads: this is the option that most people have enabled already.
2. 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 see them attempting to distract from this topic by dumping a real knee jerk of a thread about gender identity to peel us all away from this thread, lol.

Usual tabloid tactic, distract them all from the gaping wound with a convenient scapegoat topic.

Oh dammit, have I accidentally accepted tracking cookies? I am fine with there being ads, but don't want to be stalked on anything else. How do I undo what I have possibly agreed to?

Same
I don’t know any other sites that are specifically aimed at women and not just mums of young children. I’m only on MN and wouldn’t know any others anyway. I also didn’t know about not accepting cookies or such like. I always accept so clearly a mistake on my part and I’ve no idea about private browsing. Obviously I’m a technophobe😢

Well on the plus side deregistering will mean I don't waste hours of my time every day on here. I'll miss the Christmas poncing but I'm done

I meant what I said in the last paragraph, which would’ve been clearer if MN hadn’t also unhelpfully changed the way formatting works.

Privacy setting at the bottom of your screen.
or
Use Duck duck go
or
there are ways to block cookies in most browsers

ad block plus still gets shut of them, although only via 'block element' option.

expect this will get deleted and i will be shuffled off to tattle. (not!)

I’ve ’rejected all’ in privacy settings and the site is working as normal. No ad blocker. I can’t tell if that’s because my rejection didn’t work or because they haven’t successfully made the change they’ve posted about here.

In my settings there are no options to refuse anything.

edit - ah it's at the foot of page here.

🖐< - - >🖐

Perhaps they should talk to each other?

I saw an advert for that duck duck go. But I don't really like downloading stuff. So does that mean you get adverts but not the cookies.

What a time to make this announcement! Unbelievable. There would be no Mumsnet without the people creating content here every day for free.

This has made me get round to downloading duckduckgo. No adverts. Thanks for the prompt MN.

Just wanted to add that doing this with no notice is really bad.

I can no longer access the website without accepting cookies, even to delete my account, but so far the app still allows me to reject them.

I think it's really short sighted too. I first signed up after searching for various things, but I wouldn't do so now.

Ha! Ratner was exactly what I thought.

Who on earth advised them on the wording of the statement? Was it another volunteer? Unpaid intern? Surely no expert in comms would fuck up this badly?

Are you sure you are being forced to accept cookies? The pop up on the mobile site (so far) only seems to force people to accept Ads, which is not the same thing.

You can use what is called a TOR browser. It uses DuckDuckGo as a search engine. It blocks cookies, ads and IPs. Apparently many PBPs use it and those who simply don't want their IP address traced at all. It creates a fake IP from Netherlands, Germany, Norway, US, you name it anywhere randomly. Its a pain though because you need to regularly re-log in and its slower than the usual chrome etc, but it means Mumsnet will never know your location or use cookies.

Do you know I’ve been on Mumsnet for 13 years. Over that time the quality of moderation has nosedived and increase in troll posts has gone through the roof. It’s a profitable business which has absolutely no interest in investing in overnight moderation. Users have seen their data compromised and just a few days ago have been subjected to images of child sexual abuse. The timing of this is abhorrent and the wording absolutely insulting.

In all honesty I rarely post now because of the refusal to crack down on racism, ableism and classism, but I’ve always dipped in and out because I know parenthood can be lonely and there are users crying out for support. But that’s me out.

I turned on my adblocker as MN had become unusable with the virus pop-ups and adblocker seems to stop them

Thanks. That's all a bit above my IT knowledge! I don't suppose it's any worse than Facebook.

After Sunday’s fiasco there was a lot of suggestion that MN was targeted in order to disrupt a valuable resource where women can find support. In fact Justine said as much in the BBC piece where she also made reference to previous attacks.

But surely this policy is doing exactly that? A lot of women come here when they’re at their most vulnerable, in abusive relationships for instance. How do MN square the fact that they’re expecting women who are being financially abused to either pay up and therefore making themselves vulnerable to their abusive partner, or give up any rights to privacy meaning there’s absolutely no knowing who has access to them and their data. That’s surely the opposite of providing a valuable resource for women.

A woman who is being financially abused doesn’t have access to money to pay to get advice on how to leave her abusive relationship. So she will have no choice but to compromise her privacy in order to do so.

Surely that’s pretty much jumping from one abusive situation into another.

Go to Privacy Settings right at the bottom of the site, once there you can turn off various things, and apparently over 200 ad partners that MN is associated with! Be sure to check all the tabs and reject or turn off.

I was considering ad blockers only because MN seems to have a problem with adverts loading which makes the site unusable at times.

Every day at the moment there’s a new reason to deregister from MN certainly not going to pay to browse a poorly managed site.

That option is obviously not going to stay when the statement is crystal clear that anyone who rejects cookies will have to pay.

Is Netmums still about?