MNHQ want money from us

[JellySlice]

Perhaps now is the time to tell MNHQ what we want from them.

eg
Relaxation of the anti-women censorship rules.
Reinstating banned respected posters like LangCleg.

If we started a fundraiser for MN would they refuse to accept any money raised?

No, because the MRAs/TRAs would be screaming blue murder that Mumsnet were accepting bribes from the GC feminists.

XX number of subscribers has much more commercial worth than well meaning donations.

Okay, that's interesting.

Is there a way of subscribing, without giving your personal details? It's the question everyone's asking, but as there are no answers, perhaps it's just impossible.

Imv people are sounding pretty blase and 'oh, well. If it folds it folds' and assuming its due to bad business sense that they need money now.
But after Covid 19 life may not return to what it was

Having read the orginal thread in site stuff - all covid19 seems to have done is moved the plans to charge forward - possibly before extra functionality is in place that's a bit unclear.

They also don't seem to be planning to change the model after it's over either.

I can't give bank details as they've made it very clear over many years and after many problems security isn't a priority to them.

XX number of subscribers has much more commercial worth

Yes and I think that fits in with it being part of a longer term plan though I do think they've scuppered it with their long standing lax attitude to security.

Another way they could do it is to offer a 'sponsorship' deal.

They could set up sponsorships at different price points - £5, £10, £25, £50 etc.

You choose how much you want to 'sponsor' ( ie, donate) and for that you get premium membership.

This would allow people to give whatever they feel comfortable to do, and gits rid of the problem Justine mentioned that some might donate too much if it was donations only.

Keeping everyone happy who wish to donate to a crowd fund type fundraiser, and allow mumsnet to claim the xx number of premium members.

Would this work do you think?

@Daten I notice you haven't changed your name despite being asked very nicely and been given kind instructions when you said you didn't know. I'm not sure that's 'in the spirit' as they say...

The trouble is MaryHill You’d still need some way of proving who has “paid” to link it in with a user account to give them “premium” status. So the security issue remains.

I’ve been idly toying with creating a throwaway account with a new email; getting that set to Premium; and using that account to solely post “Aww, sounds lovely hun xxx” on the Baby names threads. That way MN get their money and “Premium” stats, and I reduce the risk of getting targeted (I’m already enough of a chicken to barely post here). Still a general Data risk though.

"They want subscriber numbers which can then be punted to advertisers."

That is an argument in favour of an anonymous donation system: Premium Members see fewer ads.

On the original thread on "Site Stuff", on this one on FWR and on similar threads on other Mumsnet Boards, there are members all saying the same thing:

"I want to donate anonymously to keep Mumsnet going but I will not sign up for anything that links my bank details or other identifying information to my Mumsnet account."

Unless I have missed something, Mumsnet has not even acknowledged the repeated requests for a response to the offers of "no strings" donations.

Members are volunteering to lob donations in Justine's lap, often saying that they have no interest in the supposed Premium "benefits" of fewer adverts (who cares when anyone who does not want to see them can use an Ad Blocker?) and an "Edit Button" (IMHO an extremely stupid idea to add an Edit Post feature at all and even more stupid as a "Premium Feature").

I really cannot get my head around the fact that Mumsnet is throwing away all that goodwill by completely ignoring members who are offering to donate anonymously, wanting nothing extra in return. Some people are asking to see specific improvements but many are not.

Even if Mumsnet just kept repeating a standard "Thank you but . . . " message it would be better than nothing.

For my part, the Talk Boards can stay as basic as they are - if it ain't broke don't fix it and, for the most part, it ain't broke - Advanced Search, "Threads I'm On" and "Watched Threads" could certainly do with improvement. However, I get that, for some, the appearance of "being up to date" trumps functionality and ease of use (if that sounds snarky, sorry, it's not meant to be!).

The annoying "special rules", perceptions of partisan Moderation, banning of members who contributed valued content need IMHO to be balanced against a bigger picture: the public platform and influence that Mumsnet provides.

Mumsnet in numbers

8 million user posts per year
1.2 billion page views per year
23 million visits per month
10 million unique users per month
7.22 minutes average dwell time
75% of users in full-time or part-time employment
78% of users are aged between 26-45
91% of users have children

Source: SimilarWeb/Google Analytics

More at: www.mumsnet.com/info/advertising

Mumsnet is going to have access to far more detailed site stats and analytics than can be found on various free sites, such as those that I am guessing Vitreous is relying on for data.

Privacy policy

Posting on Mumsnet Talk

" . . . posts on Mumsnet Talk are visible to anyone on the internet.

. . . We also provide an anonymised copy of all Talk posts to a handful of carefully chosen organisations so that they can analyse social trends. None of your personal information is ever shared and we remove Mumsnet usernames before sharing this information.

. . . We provide a copy of all Talk posts to a small number of organisations for analysis or to create software analysis tools to analyse brands and sentiment towards topics. Your personal data and username is not included in the copies of posts that we provide to these organisations."

More at: www.mumsnet.com/info/privacy-policy

Mumsnet in the Media

Links to news stories and articles featuring or referencing Mumsnet, including Talk Board contributions:

www.mumsnet.com/media

Online surveys and product tests

"Welcome to the home of Mumsnet Insight. We'd love to hear what you have to say: about various topics, products, services, brands and much more."

www.mumsnet.com/online-surveys-product-tests

Mumsnet Webchats

Previous webchats with Politicians and others that are topic-based. Irritating restrictions on questions but I find it hard to believe that MPs, Party Leadership candidates and others listed here would consider it worth their time and effort to participate in a webchat hosted on a sub-Reddit.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events

----

Ensuring that User Names cannot be easily linked to Bank Details is crucial and lots of people have asked for Pay Pal to be added as an option. Is Pay Pal more secure than Stripe? I don't know but there seems to be a presumption in these requests that it is.

The Premier Membership system makes it relatively easy for determined hackers to identify UserNames that have signed up, eg. if people decide to take advantage of the promised "Edit Post" function. Existing members advertising that they have signed up makes it even easier to target people.

(Dyrne - nice workaround!)

Being realistic, how is Mumsnet supposed to ensure that it never again hires or keeps anyone who would doxx members or share their personal data? Put all employees and candidates through MI6/Stasi level vetting procedures? That level of vetting never stopped double-agents infiltrating MI6 anyway.

There is plenty of evidence that Mumsnet is targeted by men who object to women talking to each other and who would love to see it closed down. It is a bit odd to claim that Justine is unaware of this when she has been targeted personally:

"Mumsnet's co-founder suffers 'swatting attack'"
BBC 19 August 2015

"It's challenging to build a website that can stand up to a determined attacker, while still being cost-effective to run and easy to use," commented security expert Dr Steven Murdoch from University College London.

"These types of incident will keep on happening, so this is a good reminder to not use the same password on multiple websites and be cautious about what information you give out online."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33985706

"Mumsnet hackers publish 3,000 passwords and call armed police to CEO Justine Roberts' house"
International Business Times August 19, 2015

"A hacking collective who took responsibility for launching a cyberattack on the Mumsnet parenting website and sending armed police to its owner's house has published a database claimed to contain 3,000 user passwords. The group, called Dad Security, published a list which appears to show the user names, IP addresses and passwords of the users, plus the email addresses and passwords of site administrators.

The website and its forums were attacked on 11 August when they were knocked offline for several hours; at least 11 user accounts were compromised. Simultaneously, Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts was 'swatted' in an incident where armed police were wrongly called to her London home.

The attack began with a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on the website. Common among online hacking collectives, this attack bombards a website with traffic until it is knocked offline. The site was restored by 10am the next morning, 12 August.

In the aftermath it was found that at least 11 user accounts were compromised; this is thought to have been through phishing attacks, however. Roberts said on 19 August that no data was stolen during the DDoS attack.

Swatting

Hours after the attack began, an armed response team from the Metropolitan Police arrived at Roberts' house in Islington, North London, following reports of a gunman prowling the local area and gunshots being heard. This was revealed to be an act of swatting, where a fake distress call is made with the intention to get armed police to the victim's house. A second incident saw armed police arrive at the house of someone who interacted with Dad Security over Twitter.

Posting on Mumsnet, Roberts said: "An armed response team turned up at my house last week in the middle of the night, after reports of a gunman prowling around. A Mumsnet user who engaged with @DadSecurity on Twitter was warned to 'prepare to be swatted by the best' in a tweet... after which police arrived at her house late at night following a report of gunshots. Needless to say, she and her young family were pretty shaken up. It's worth saying that we don't believe these addresses were gained directly from any Mumsnet hack, as we don't collect addresses. The police are investigating both instances."

. . . "Dad Security: 'One of our members is a moderator of Mumsnet' "

More at:
www.ibtimes.co.uk/mumsnet-hackers-publish-3000-passwords-call-armed-police-ceo-justine-roberts-house-1516092

I would love to know if that claim, that a Mumsnet Mod was a member of the hacking collective, was discovered to have any foundation (or relevance) and if anyone was ever prosecuted in connection with these incidents.

There are plenty of reasons to criticise Mumsnet generally and the Premier Membership plea from Justine in particular but asking "Who would benefit and who would lose if Mumsnet folded?" is a rational starting point when considering a response.

Thank you to those who posted links to these threads - they are from before I became a member and I had not seen them before and they cheered me up!

"Tell MNHQ why you use Mumsnet" Sept 2018
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/3377940-Tell-MNHQ-why-you-use-Mumsnet

"Lurkers of FWR, pop in and say Hi!" Sept 2018
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3380184-Lurkers-of-FWR-pop-in-and-say-Hi

For a start you have basic security in place. So those who can see IPP addresses should be very limited. Same with Stripe information. Not a temporary intern.

asking "Who would benefit and who would lose if Mumsnet folded?" is a rational starting point when considering a response.

Agreed. FWR as it currently is, even with restrictions, deletions and banning, is better than nothing. I would donate a one-off sum to help MN continue to provide this FWR platform, flaws and all. But, I will not pay for the dubious privilege of submitting to MRA bullies. I will not subscribe to the continuation of their bullying. And I will certainly not offer up my personal data to them.

MoleSmokes

Thanks for all that background information. It's invaluable and interesting.

I think MNHQ have handled this whole thing very poorly. As with many other posters, I would give an anonymous donation but absolutely will not give them any more personal data than absolutely necessary.

Justine said only 5 staff members would have access to Stripe data. That's great and all, but what if one of the 5 is the mate who Emma said she has at MNHQ? There are all kinds of reasons why many users are balking at handing over their payment information. Even if you took out the TRA specific issues, there are plenty of women on MN who have potentially dangerous exes who they wouldn't want their current information potentially being available to.

Yes, what TheProdigalKittensReturn, says.

It's not just the women who post habitually in FWR. I'm thinking of all the women seeking help and advice on the Relationships board. For them to sign up to payment - either a one-off or a regularly monthly payment - is just fucking impossible because of their circumstances in an abusive relationship. To tell such women that there is a two-tier level of women - those who can pay and those who cannot, is not at all good.

If Mumsnet now becomes a paid-for commercial service, with negligent security and lax privacy and safeguarding - then Mumsnet is now ignorant of what it should be; and Mumsnet is now betraying everything they have ever had the opportunity, over years, to learn from women.

If it becomes a commercial service then considerable tech upgrades can and should be expected. I would expect a commercial service to keep my data secure.

Kittens I am surprised by the number with access to the data. Why isn’t it only Justine? Or Justine plus only one other. Again it shows a complete lack of understanding re the need for extremely high security measures in these circumstances (both because of past breaches but also because they need to protect their users).

I totally agree,I'm so shocked at the lax security.

Mner2000 I would actually argue that Justine doesn’t even need to know. She’s the CEO of what is turning out to be a fairly large company. She doesn’t need to be involved in membership issues. Presumably they’re setting up a department for that and it’s those people who will have access.

If that’s the case I’m holding out some hope there will be an improvement on the membership side as well and they’ll stop letting PBP re-register again and again. (They obviously have a way of seeing it’s a PBP as they can zap and ban them quickly. Why they don’t implement this check at registration level is beyond me)

I don't know if anyone has linked to Justine's post on the original Site Stuff thread, but it seems rather more pertinent than Justine's older quotes that have been linked to further back up the thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/3874618-Mumsnet-Premium-membership-please-support-us-if-you-can?msgid=95463227
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. We have tread an, admittedly tortuous at times, line of allowing debate of the issue but trying to keep the tone respectful. That does entail taking people's feelings into account, as well as doing our best to keep censorship to the minimum. I've no doubt we're inconsistent sometimes but moderation of this hasn't been an easy task.

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.

Dyrne you are right not Justine but it certainly shouldn’t be as high as 5 people. I used to work in research and we had more stringent checks in place for anonymised data than they do for names, addresses, bank details etc. I am shocked at the complacency shown by Justine on the thread and certainly would not trust MN with anything more than a throwaway email.

But of course not all mumsnetters agree with the FWR position .. why should they? Women are not a monolith

Since posters who dislike FWR can hide it or (omg!) just not click on FWR threads ... why would they even care how FWR is moderated? I don’t get it..

It’s like cat lovers wanting to have a say on how The Dog House is moderated.

Of course FWR costs more to moderate.. It has special rules that seem as challenging for moderators as they are for users

One way to make this board less costly to run would be to get rid of the special rules. Just saying...

In fact many have expressed concern that the tone on the FWR boards towards Trans people is unpleasant and unnecessary.

Many women find both the tone & content of people determined to disrupt / smear / silence members posting on MN FWR board unpleasant & unnecessary.

I find the idea that women should always maintain a pleasant tone but unpleasant and unnecessary.

Both