So the Guardian begs for money while simultaneously censoring me and deleting me for stating biological reality, science and fact. Now MNHQ want money while simultaneously censoring me and deleting me for stating biological reality, science and fact. Not a chance. There is no way I’m going to pay and hope that the new model will allow people to state truths, I want guarantees I will be allowed to speak truths before I pay.
Let’s be clear: as much as MN is a place where we can discuss things gender and sex-related, it still comes at a cost. Nothing reflects the scariness of the world in terms of free speech right now when we are supposed to feel grateful that we “only” have to be careful with pronouns here (not a big ask they say!), and “only” tiptoe lightly around accuracy of a person’s sex (be nice!) and can “only” frame discussion around surgery for trans people in “polite” language if it is “in the spirit of the site” (we don’t have definition of that but we don’t want you to discuss this!).
That’s the point we are at in society in terms of this area of discussion: be glad there is a place that allows you to say what you really mean and that is actually truthful - as long as you don’t mind only being allowed to be 50% truthful.
(The whole model of MN never made sense to me anyway in relation to the “we have to delete things to keep advertisers happy”. WE are the product MNHQ is selling to advertisers. Unfettered access to millions of unique users. If an advertiser wants to remove themselves from being able to access those millions of unique users because some of us refuse to pronoun-pander, what sort of advertisers are they? Pretty rubbish ones I would imagine.)
Would it be sad if MN has to close because it was financially unsustainable due to lack of advertising? Yes, and the gloating of TRAs would be sickening, but I think that this site is too big and provides too much opportunity to the right advertisers for that to happen, and I will certainly hold out, especially as there is ongoing tone deafness from MNHQ about external vexatious monitors/pronoun police who report, OPs started not in good faith (current lack of advanced search already seeing that escalate) and posters banned for saying the “wrong” thing (the right thing but deemed too “mean”).
Give us a working model of what we would want to buy, don’t ask us to buy a model that we only value because we can discuss things at 50% of language accuracy, for want of a better place to do so.
It’s like asking us to buy the chickpea/wholemeal pasta and telling us to be grateful there’s still something on the shelves for us to buy. Just as hard to stomach.