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A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

larslofgren.com

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Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#171

Post by michaelnovati »

4bpp wrote: post #139
michaelnovati wrote: post #28

I'm Michael and this was about me. This person never reached out for comment and is missing half the story. I'm happy to fill people in on the rest if this person or someone else wants to hear. I agree with one or two of the characterizations but the majority I don't and there is a lot more to this story than it seems... RE: INDUSTRY. Rithm School (their main competitor) shut down. Hack Reactor is down to single digi…

Your post does not really do much to dispel the negative picture that the opening article paints of you. You say their decline is "predominantly an industry problem". Is this also the case for your own company, Formation? You went on the record comparing Codesmith to a sex cult and accusing it of deceiving and exploiting its students and evidently consider criticising them to be a mission worth years of near-daily de…

I compared the statement 'do this because it changed my life and the life of many others' to the type of language used in cult documentaries on HBO. I stand by that opinion.

Codesmith is not a sex cult. I can't believe I'm writing that sentence.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#172

Post by michaelnovati »

GenerWork wrote: post #106
michaelnovati wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might. I have hordes of documents. It's a really sad situation and very sad that he characterized this this way without even talking to me whatsoever.

I believe the phrase that applies here is "put up or shut up". If you have hordes of documents to draw on as primary sources, then it should be pretty simple (but perhaps time consuming) to write a rebuttal.

[flagged]

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#173

Post by peab »

lemagedurage wrote: post #109
phil-martin wrote: post #94

The article was fascinating, but the part I didn't see was... what was the motive? Assuming the article paints an accurate picture of what was going on... why was it going on? Is it solely because he runs a company in the same competitive space?

Yes, he owns a competitor with his wife, formation.dev, so there is a clear incentive.

Why didn't the author sue? Feels like this is a case where if what he says is true then that's what litigation is for, no?

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#174

Post by kjs3 »

michaelnovati wrote: post #99
FridayoLeary wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello. It's nice to be able to interact directly with the subject of the article, so thanks for coming on. It's a shame you're being downvoted, because it would definitely be interesting to hear your perspective. This can't be a pleasant experience for you. I have a couple of questions for you. Firstly the article really didn't hold back about you in a way that you don't usually see. But he makes very specific and ve…

Yeah I'll I'm going to say for now is that if all your competitors (that I spoke positively about) are shutting down and shrinking and laying people off... there's more to the story. A sad story about an industry dying that should be told.

Were you a moderator for them as well?

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#175

Post by nebula8804 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #11
FridayoLeary wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It' not but it often is the most useful and sometimes only source of information. If i need to lok up some very specific thing what are my options? An SEO optimized blog post, often about a similar but adjacent topic, or a forum of guys. At least with a forum there should in theory be more diversity of opinion.

Most topics still have old-fashioned forums, they're just even harder to find these days. And there are still lots of blogs. Not all of them are SEO blogspam. And there's always libgen... Reddit is pretty much the last place I'd go for reliable information, especially if we're talking about anything that's a commercial product.

This is like the Linux discussion. (No its not the year of Linux no matter how much Windows 11 pisses you off)

"Old fashioned forums" absolutely suck for discoverability. You have to waste time digging through posts, most of which are unrelated or just filler. No upvote/downvote and usually a mediocre threading mechanism. While we are on this topic, Discord is the same. IRC like applications are not an easy way to get to the point for the same reasons.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#176

Post by jrowen »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #151
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most online communities work that way. It’s highly unusual to have some sort of judicial process.

Most older forums had an element of self-selection... people don't hang out where they're not wanted. But with Reddit, it's the only forum left (for any number of broad and narrow topics) so you're either there or nowhere. This forces to some extent people who would gravitate away from each other, and personalities go overboard. There's more need of a judicial process there, than there would be elsewhere. And that wa…

But with Reddit, it's the only forum left (for any number of broad and narrow topics)

What are some examples? In my experience there are numerous other communities of various types for any given interest. Reddit is just kind of a convenient surface level a lot of the time.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#178

Post by wahnfrieden »

fwipsy wrote: post #156
wahnfrieden wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghislaine Maxwell was maybe one of these powerful mods. But it is another contested conspiracy theory. Evidence pasted: The Name “Maxwellhill” The username directly references “Maxwell,” which is not a common surname. Ghislaine Maxwell grew up at Headington Hill Hall, which was nicknamed “Maxwell Hill” after her father, Robert Maxwell, bought it. This isn’t a vague reference it’s oddly specific and personal. It’s lik…

Funny that you should mention a Reddit-originated conspiracy theory on an article about how Reddit is deteriorating as a source of information. I found this blog post: https://coagulopath.com/ghislaine-maxwell-does-not-have-a-se... which appears to conclusively refute the main evidence above, but I haven't independently verified. If you have stronger evidence than what appears to be copy-pasted AI output, I will re-e…

Thanks. It wasn’t AI btw. I found this interesting comment analyzing the article you shared https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29898523 (it’s also curious that your article speculates about Maxwell’s innocence in taking part in abusing children herself but that’s not directly relevant)

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#179

Post by [deleted] »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #122
SilverElfin wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bad actor mod of a popular subreddit can persist for years, visibly, without people managing either to oust the mod, or to take down the sub's influence. This happens because the regular users have no power. I remember seeing some article that said a small number of mods control most of the popular subreddits. Many of them put their own bias into the system by banning users, banning sources, deleting content base…

Ghislaine Maxwell was maybe one of these powerful mods. But it is another contested conspiracy theory. Evidence pasted: The Name “Maxwellhill” The username directly references “Maxwell,” which is not a common surname. Ghislaine Maxwell grew up at Headington Hill Hall, which was nicknamed “Maxwell Hill” after her father, Robert Maxwell, bought it. This isn’t a vague reference it’s oddly specific and personal. It’s lik…

[deleted]

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#180

Post by neuroelectron »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #155
lambda wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the mod stopped posting publicly around the time she went to prison. That seems to have been the catalyst for the conspiracy theory. But it was actually a couple days apart; he stopped posting before she went to prison. And he actually posted to some private subs, and was involved in some DMs, after he stopped posting publicly and after she went to prison. There's really very little evidence other than a vague c…

>It's basically just completely incoherent. Like many conspiracy theories, These are absurdly strong claims. This isn't an incoherent theory... it's inconclusive, sure. Unprovable? Probably (difficult to imagine what would have to change to find out with certainty one way or the other).

Precisely, but the coincidences that line up are on the side on improbable she was not the mod. (See link in OP)

i.e. it's almost impossible for to have been anybody else. The supposed "mod chats" are clearly fabrications met to cover it up.

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