Today @Nominet released a report on its public benefit work. It claims to have reached 721,777 young people in the UK, spending £1.9m. It isn't true. The figure is closer to 22,339 - 32x smaller. It's just one more sign of an increasingly dishonest .uk internet operator [thread]

The 721,777 is specifically highlighted as the impact of the org's work in the report [ https://media.nominet.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Social-Impact-Report-2020.pdf] and its CEO stressed that figure when announcing it as the company's AGM this week. Here's why it's a fiction...

It comprises an addition of work done by orgs that received grants from Nominet: the Scouts, Samaritans, BBC and some others. All worthy and admirable groups doing good work. Nominet is trading on their good name to greenwash its corporate greed

The largest component is 334,124 from students that accessed the BBC's micro:bit website. Nominet provided some funding that went to its existing foundation. Nominet's report notes that the website saw an increase of 135% over the year it had supplied funds

Even assuming Nominet's money was responsible for the *entire increase* in the website's traffic - highly unlikely given the BBC's name and reach - the figure isn't actually the number of students that visited the site. It's an estimate

Teachers access the site, and the figures were extrapolated to the number of students that those teachers *may* have taught. But in terms of reach, the real figure is the 135% increase = 191,624 divided by the av. class size of UK secondary schools (15.9). So: 12,051

Next biggest figure in the 721,777 is 154,099 from the Scouts Great Indoors website. Nominet had nothing to do with this website, which has seen a big jump thanks the COVID pandemic. Nominet funded the creation of 40 "digital citizen" badges which are a very small part of it

In fact, the Scouts website took off because of its own actions and significant media attention from UK newspapers - none of which had anything to do with Nominet. Nominet's actual impact is the 12,354 downloads of digital citizen activities. In terms of actual people...

There are 40 badges. So 12,354 / 40 = 309 young people impacted. Not 166,453 as claimed. Next up: the Samaritans. Another well-known and admirable organization doing good work. Nominet supplied it with an online dashboard...

It claims an impact figure of 175,000 young people. Because these were the number of *additional* emails and SMSes that The Samaritans handled after Nominet had provided the dashboard. Even Nominet has a hard time claiming this figure with a straight face...

From the report: "While there are other factors that could have influenced this figure, the Samaritans team identified that the dashboard has been a valuable source of information for volunteers and played a key role in the response to COVID-19." But that's not all...

That figure is the number of "contacts" not number of people. So, let's assume, given the work that the Samaritans does, that each contact is a conversation that lasts, on average, 20 emails or SMSes. Even if we give Nominet full credit for every one of those, it's 8,750 people

And lastly, 57,395 in podcasts. But even within the report, it notes that that figure actually relates to 1,230 unique users. It claims the 57,395 figure anyway. And that's how we go from 721,777 people reached by Nominet's public benefit work to a real-world figure of 22,339.

But there's more: Nominet gave £1.9m this year - which compares to an average of £5m from 2010-2016. Last year it gave £1.7m; the year before around £500,000. What happened? Why the massive drop?

Because Nominet killed off its charitable trust. And it pulled in the money in house. As the operator of the .uk internet registry, it operates in the public trust and used to provides its excess revenue to good causes through that trust. That changed with a new CEO in 2015

That new CEO decided he wanted to branch into commercial markets and so, among other things, killed off the Trust and kept the money - which was then wasted on things like trying to break into the spectrum management and autonomous vehicle market

After public criticism, Nominet promised to increase its public benefit spending, which it did. Slightly. To £1.9m a year. From an average of £5m. At the same time, the CEO and senior management have awarded themselves double-digit pay rises.

The CEO received a 30 per cent pay increase last year to £537,000, despite overseeing numerous failed commercial efforts. But Nominet remains a non-profit, public benefit organization by law so it has to be seen to be doing something for the UK - hence this report...

A report that is, frankly, a farce. @UKScouting, @samaritans and micro:dot are doing good work and take money from Nominet because of what it was - a non-profit running .uk for all. That is no longer the case. They shouldn't let Nominet launder its reputation through them