Trying to stop me using an ad blocker

[Mookie81]

Dear Mumsnet,

Is using an ad blocker against the rules?
If not, stop posting this across my page every 5 minutes.
The most recent one didn’t even have the 'proceed without disabling' tab. It's not on.

sorry to be a party pooper but it is against the rules, unless you pay for premium

Well someone's got to pay for the running of the site, so the choice is premium or adverts, seems reasonable to me.

If you hit refresh, then the proceed without disabling tab comes up.

I gave in and paid £2.99 a month to go ad free. Loads of sites now make you pay or disable ad blocker, even YouTube.

Fair enough.
People talk about using an ad blocker on here all the time, I wasn't aware it was against the rules.
I only installed it today since they've started using those drop down video ads!

Does it get rid of all those sticky "promoted by" threads as well as the ads? I find them more annoying TBH.

It seems to have, yes.

I meant the premium rather than the adblocker, but thanks. I've held out against premium so far but TBH the amount of time I spend on here I probably should just do it.

I would worry about giving my bank details for premium, also it's a recurring payment/direct debit, what happens if you get banned and can't access your account to cancel it.

I'm sure they don't have your banking details at MNHQ, it will be through a third party. Good point about banning but I've only been deleted once in 18 years so probably fairly safe. Will sleep on the thought.

Direct debit you can stop yourself. Recurring payments using your card are more challenging - I once had to close a bank account to stop one.

I just checked and it's a recurring payment so that would be a no from me about signing up for premium. If you could just make one off payments then I might consider it.

Hello and thanks for your post. Like many platforms, Mumsnet has a pay or consent model, which means we don't allow the use of ad blockers.

Premium will remove ads and all revenue goes directly towards funding our campaigning work. Premium can be cancelled anytime via your account settings or by emailing us: [email protected]

Your subscription and future payments will be cancelled if you deregister your account or if your account is banned by MNHQ.

Download and use the DuckDuckGo browser . No ads.

Not quite what you asked, but although I mostly use the app, if I'm on the website I have found the ads are least annoying on Firefox. You could also try a VPN - I live in Europe and lots of the ads seem not to load. The blank spaces are less annoying than videos that take up the whole screen.

Edited to add, sorry just saw this is a week old, no idea why it's in Active Threads!

I have paid for Premium and I still got it. It’s gone now. That was about 6 weeks ago.

Gosh, where have you been, @Mookie81?

You missed the furore several months ago when those of us using ad-blockers were accused (by MNHQ) of being freeloaders piggy backing on other users. Fun for all involved!

Many years ago I first discovered the existence of ad-blockers through guidance from other posters here - and had several blissful years of MN use sans entire page covering adverts (often pretty inappropriate according to those who saw them). I finally had to move to the app (which in its earlier iteration didn’t meet my browsing needs) because I am not prepared to subsidise MN with hard cash when they already have my quite considerable content.

(Right now on the app there is a persistent advert relating to IQ which shows gradations from almost zero intelligence - dark face - through to high intelligence - with the faces becoming lighter and lighter. It’s awfully hard to understand how MNHQ expect me to find that anything but deeply offensive.)

I did miss that particular row, but I saw the threads complaining about pushing Premium on people.
People shouldn't be forced to choose between excessive adverts or pay. When I first joined MN, there were a few dotted around, now a page feels like it's more ads than the actual thread!
It's obnoxious behaviour.

They seem to have ramped up the disable add blocker pop up and its popping up every few seconds driving me crazy. The trouble is ive tried unblocking the add blocker by clicking on the link and my samsung device wont let me unblock! im not very tech savy and I dont really know what im doing.

I find mine difficult to unblock individual sites on iPad and iPhone but on my iMac it's really easy to do, same adblocker is on all of them so it's probably just if you are using it on a phone or tablet that it is like mine. The iMac version of the ad blocker is much more user friendly.

Yes I only use my samsung smart phone i do not have any other devices or a laptop. it will not disable the add blocker at all. I still do get a few adds though on MN including video pop up ones so im not add free anyway.

I started using Brave browser on my iPad because Safari always seemed to struggle with MN after a while, often just grinding to a frustrating halt. It seems to block the ads very effectively with no input from me, and through some inner alchemy doesn’t trigger that annoying Adblocker message. It’s made for a much pleasanter browsing experience.

Perhaps Mumsnet could use some of the revenue to improve the site and app? I might be more inclined to pay.