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.

Good luck 👍

That's a good point.

We are the product the mn sells to advertisers and we are being asked to pay to be slightly less the product (i am quite sure there will still be banner ads abd promoted by mumsnet posts if you pay to use the site) or accept tracking in order to be the product.

Have you sorted out the various glitches yet?

I don't know if this works on a PC browser but if you use the DuckDuckGo browser on your phone you get no ads (just the occasional small blank space with "advertisement" written at the top that you can just scroll on past)

Site has also turned clunky and slow.

I won't let the door hit my behind on the way out.

Is it even legal? So we either have to pay or have to accept tracking cookies. Does the ICO agree with this?

What a message to send to all the users supporters of your website??!

Presumably if Rachel Reeves was advising mumsnet on their advertising model she wouldn’t have chosen her own digitally battered and bloodied face to be repeatedly splashed across everyone’s screens in the adverts of a few months ago, which MNHQ were none too quick to address. Not quite as unpleasant as images of child sex abuse, but not that much better.

Plenty of websites, when you click reject cookies, redirect to Google. IDK if it's legal (and I don't agree with it) but there's certainly a lot of it around. 🤷‍♀️

Wow. Well I have rejected every possible cookie for advertising and also will continue to use an ad-blocker. I do not care whether this is 'freeloading' - what rubbish. The Internet used to be a free place for information, it should stay that way.

Post is in poor taste really. People are welcome to piggyback, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Seems like mumsnet have become greedy.

No idea why you’re just posting this now @BeckyAMumsnet ? I’ve been getting this pop up for weeks now. I guess many have complained so you’ve had to ‘out’ yourself? Your wording is terrible .. ‘piggy backing’ - just wow! Victim blaming springs to mind. 😡😡😡😡

How do you change your options?! 😨
I had a pop up come up and frankly I wasn’t paying too much attention and the wording was a big ‘carry on as you are or go premium’ but I didn’t fully understand the implications of ‘carry on’.

I’ve questioning if I spend too much time on mumsnet anyway so I think this is a nice little sign that I have and perhaps it’s time to wind my time down.

Still welcome any guidance on where to go to change my cookie preferences on MN even if it means I can’t use it anymore. Thank you 🙏🏽

Well I’m out.

In the past users with accessibility nees have been advised by HQ to use ad blockers as certain types of ad make the site impossible to use (rather than simiply migraine inducing).

What is the advice to people using accessibility aids? (And please don't do what you did last time - deny there is a problem and cite your immense testing from a group who do it for free. You get what you pay for in testing)

For fucks sake, who wrote this piece of comms and who signed it off?

It's not so much about what you are doing. It's your timing and your tone. Your attitude to the source of your content, as a publisher.

Absolute shite. You're a bunch of unprofessional twats.

I'm off to find out how to delete my account permanently.

You can reject the cookies immediatly after being forced to accept.

At the bottom of the page > Privacy Settings > Reject all.

I agree. It’s so awful that it must have been discussed and deliberately inserted to make a point. This is not someone’s first draft that slipped through without management approval.

In other words, to answer that time-honoured Mumsnet question- yes, they absolutely DID mean to be so rude.

But I don’t understand why!

I access on a works laptop and security is locked down, extreme adblockung I don't even get them on YouTube. They manage cookies so I couldn't consent if I wanted to. I'll be leaving when this happens.

@QuietlyStorming you can delete the mumsnet cookies through your browser and the next time you load the site it will ask you again to accept cookies or pay.

I've just had a thought. Without us there would be no MN so maybe it should be them paying us not the other way around. I mean, if they want to be like the publications mentioned in the OP who pay those that generate their content, then it's only fair. 😁

well.. i'm still not turning off my adblocker.. infact i just upgraded it to block cookie consent. Thanks for reminding me to do that!

it's always tricky to monetise a site like this, where you provide the space, but we provide the content. It's worth remembering who does what, always.

Loads of sites do this now … not just teeny tiny grabbing sites either, big corporate grabbing sites too 🤷🏻‍♀️😡