not to anyone willing to pay then, right? only in cases where the organizer has gone awol
Yes, if it is abandoned (notice that word in the title), the meet-up is available to anyone willing to pay
title has been updated since i commented
Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
31–40 of 129 posts
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#32Yep. I had a 1200 person geeky event meetup (board game events, geek movies, role playing, escape rooms, renaissance faires, conventions, zombie walks, a bunch of random geeky stuff) that I eventually wanted to stop paying $180/year for when the pandemic hit, since I wasn't willing to host any in-person events anymore.
I stepped down and someone who wasn't even a member of the group swooped in to pay for it and has only used it to post speed dating events since (so the past two years).
Technically I inherited the group myself, but I was an active member already and the original creator chose to hand it over to me after she moved away from the area, since I said I was willing to pay for it of the people on the leadership team (I was a moderator and posted events already).
It's one of the things I hate most about Meetup. There can be good things about it, if someone else is willing to carry on the torch like I was, and wants to keep the group going, but letting whoever wants to swoop in and snipe it just to harvest the user list is pretty crappy.
It should be something the admin (or at least a moderator, since maybe an admin could just ghost at some point) can choose to hand over, not just be an automatic process up for grabs for anyone.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#33> meetup.com actually "offered" our meetups Do you have a link or a screenshot you can show us? Might help contextualize.
When an owner of a meetup decides to stop doing so – the ownership is offered to other members of the meetup group. This allows the group to continue even if the owner disengages. But yes, it does also allow the new owner to gain access to a complete list of members in the meetup group (since they are now the admin of the group) It's a bit messed up, but it's been that way for a long time.
Don't members of the meetup group already have access to the members list for that group?
Thought that was a core concept?
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#34This has been an issue with Meetup for as long as I remember. The problem is there are two distinct scenarios. One is that the organizer has lost interest or is stepping down for some reason. Allowing the community to continue on Meetup in that case makes sense, by having someone step up to continue paying Meetup. The other is that the community as a whole has decided to move to a new platform. In this case keeping t…
If someone wants to pay for it then at that point they could ask participants if they want to remain part of the group and give the new sponsor access to their PII.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#35I am a multiple meetup organizer and owner on meetup.com and I find it actually great that the meetup can stay alive if the organizer stop to pay. Your communities are not owned by you. Also, they don't give subscribers infos but just "an access" to send them email communication to the list, not the "list" with email list etc...
I don’t know about you, but I feel a little weird about the fact that some random person can just buy all the contacts/access to the profiles of our old podcast producer meetup group without my input or opting in.
Imagine if folks could buy abandoned Facebook profiles and be instantly connected to all their friends and groups/pages. I think most people would be against that.
At the very least I would hope to see a prompt or notification of some kind appear that says “hey, this community is under new management” and then I have to opt to stay in.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#36If you don't renew a domain name, someone else can buy it. Is this much different?
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#37I am a multiple meetup organizer and owner on meetup.com and I find it actually great that the meetup can stay alive if the organizer stop to pay. Your communities are not owned by you. Also, they don't give subscribers infos but just "an access" to send them email communication to the list, not the "list" with email list etc...
Well, in the scenario outlined by OP, their former community is now _owned_ by a third party uninterested in the community's purpose and spamming the members to their own ends.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#38Not sure how this can possibly be legal in the framework of GDPR. I'm not a lawyer of course, but treating data is tied to a purpose, and treating it for some other purpose requires new consent. (IANAL of course)
So if someone comes in and runs the same community, that's one thing. It at least kind of still does the same thing.
Harvesting the user data and then offering speed dating stuff that's completely unrelated, as one comment here describes, that's just grabbing "random" data off the webs and starting spamming; no relation to the previous purpose of data treatment. And meetup making a profit off of that... I mean, again, I'm not a lawyer, but that's certainly against the spirit of the law.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#39not to anyone willing to pay then, right? only in cases where the organizer has gone awol
Yes, if it is abandoned (notice that word in the title), the meet-up is available to anyone willing to pay
You mean they're being offered on the dark web or something? Is this something other than the thing where members get to take on admin'ing the group if the original admin leaves?
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#40If you don't renew a domain name, someone else can buy it. Is this much different?
If you don’t renew a domain name, the person who buys it after you doesn’t get access to all the emails you’ve sent + a copy of your website. They just get the name and have to start from scratch.
(Which is how it should be on meetup — clear all of the group content, members, etc and let somebody start over with just the name)