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Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

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Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#51

Post by Joeboy »

Semaphor wrote: post #46
cstejerean wrote: post #19

This 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…

> including subscriber's list with full name and email That is the issue here. Someone taking over and creating events that others get notified about, okay. But the first paying person coming along gets all that personal data? That is not acceptable in any way and probably against GDPR and whatever that California thing is called.

I'm very doubtful that part's true. If you have your full name on your profile then sure, the new organizer will have access to it (as they did when they weren't the organizer). Meetup wants you to message people through their app, so I very much doubt they give away a bunch of email addresses willingly. I think perhaps what's meant is that the new organizer gets the ability to send group messages, which get emailed to people.

Edit / possible U-turn: There's a post from Symbiote below that suggests maybe they do let organizers pay to get more data.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#52

Post by Symbiote »

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #50
Forgeties79 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

Having not been a meetup admin, what access do you have for user's information? Is it just their meetup profiles, or do you actively have their email addresses? Also, you said two things interesting: "profiles of our old podcast producer meetup group", and then "without my input or opting in". You used both "our" and "my". Do you see it as your group, or a group of people who have come together and could keep it goin…

I'm an admin/owner for a Meetup group.

I think the only thing I can see that other members can't is:

  1 Number of RSVPs
  2 List of meetups attended
  3 No-shows
  4 Last visit to the Meetup page
  5 Whether they are blocked from the group
Except for 3 and 5, the information is all available on pages visible to members anyway, though you'd need to page through all the past events to aggregate it.

I do see a box "Get to know your members — With the Pro registration form, you can get key attendee details like email address and job title". I wonder where job title comes from, I certainly haven't provided that to Meetup. I'd also like there to be a way to hide my email address from Pro group owners, but I can't see one. Possibly I don't see the setting as I'm not a member of any Pro groups.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#53

Post by agileAlligator »

jfoster wrote: post #49
aardvarkr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case it’s a moot point, but on the other hand we have had so many past examples of community “owners” shutting down their community out of spite. The community needs to be able to control their own destiny with or without the founder.

I've never been an admin of any meetup group, but I have been an attendee of many. As an attendee, I'm almost never caring who the group owner is, and it certainly doesn't play a role in whether I decide to join the group or not. As you suggest, I think the community belongs to the community.

I think there needs to be some sort of a middle ground. Maybe the organizer can call a vote, and if a certain quorum is met the community can be dissolved.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#54

Post by revlolz »

Meetup burned the bridge very badly for me. They got super greedy with their monetization and then moved their model to charge based on the number of members yet their site created or tolerated hundreds/thousands of fake accounts impossible to curate without detrimental to the group enforcement.when raising the issue their responses were basically "good luck" or "sorry, but were just going to be shit to everyone equally. Also, we're increasing prices for the third time."

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#55

Post by Semaphor »

Joeboy wrote: post #51
Semaphor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including subscriber's list with full name and email That is the issue here. Someone taking over and creating events that others get notified about, okay. But the first paying person coming along gets all that personal data? That is not acceptable in any way and probably against GDPR and whatever that California thing is called.

I'm very doubtful that part's true. If you have your full name on your profile then sure, the new organizer will have access to it (as they did when they weren't the organizer). Meetup wants you to message people through their app, so I very much doubt they give away a bunch of email addresses willingly. I think perhaps what's meant is that the new organizer gets the ability to send group messages, which get emailed…

That sounds more reasonable.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#57

Post by nokya »

Reselling (and sometimes even worse: handing them over for free) abandoned groups has been part of Meetup's original business model (or at least for a very long time). I personally avoided this bad situation only by luck, thanks to a friend who had her company group and all members handed over to a competitor.

I am really sorry you were tricked by this. It is documented in their terms of use (which nobody reads) so I don't think there is much to do but to spread the word and warn other Meetup users around you. Let them know to make sure they get everyone to leave their group before they leave it or abandon it.

Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay

#60

Post by whimsicalism »

Joeboy wrote: post #51
Semaphor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including subscriber's list with full name and email That is the issue here. Someone taking over and creating events that others get notified about, okay. But the first paying person coming along gets all that personal data? That is not acceptable in any way and probably against GDPR and whatever that California thing is called.

I'm very doubtful that part's true. If you have your full name on your profile then sure, the new organizer will have access to it (as they did when they weren't the organizer). Meetup wants you to message people through their app, so I very much doubt they give away a bunch of email addresses willingly. I think perhaps what's meant is that the new organizer gets the ability to send group messages, which get emailed…

> Edit / possible U-turn: There's a post from Symbiote below that suggests maybe they do let organizers pay to get more data.

But still not email or full name, just stuff like attendance record.

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