DAM.
Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
111–120 of 129 posts
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#112i recently unsubscribed from meetup out of abject disgust.
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here is the unsubscribe sequence for meetup Pro:
- there is no unsubscribe/cancel button in the app
- google and find this https://help.meetup.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002862672
- learn that you have to email pro-billing@meetup.com to cancel
- they reply:
> Canceling a Pro subscription is something we have to do at the back end. We'd like to offer you a one-time 50% discount to continue your Meetup Pro subscription. This would automatically apply to your upcoming Pro renewal. > Without a subscription, you will no longer be able to organize your groups. Your groups may be closed or another organizer may take them over. > Please reply to this message to confirm if you’d like to accept the discount and continue your Meetup Pro subscription. > We will not take action on your account until we hear back.
- me: no. cancel. come on guys
- 1 day later
- me: hi Diana, just checking in, can. you please cancel my subscription.
> Thanks for confirming that you do not want the 50% discount to stay on Pro and retain your groups. Without a subscription, you will lose access to all Pro features and you will be removed as the organizer for your groups. After thirty days, your groups will either close or someone else may step up as the organizer. Before I proceed, I'd like to make sure you're aware of your options. Please let us know how you’d like to proceed by choosing from one of these options: Continue leading 3 or fewer groups by downgrading to a standard Meetup subscription. Or cancel your subscription entirely, which disables all Pro features and leaves your group vulnerable to closure or takeover. > If you've read through these options and would still like to cancel your subscription, please reply with the words, "Please cancel my Pro subscription." We'll restore your account to its status before you enrolled in Meetup Pro. This means we'll remove you as the organizer from any groups you started or took over while you had a Meetup Pro subscription. Let me know how you'd like to proceed! I'll keep an eye out for your reply so I can take action on your account.
- me: Please cancel my Pro subscription.
> Yvan here from the Community Support team, filling in for Diana. As you requested, I've canceled your Meetup Pro subscription, effective immediately.
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i wanted to put them on a shit list so badly. its probably easier to launch nukes than quit meetup.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 y…
There is one piece of not so obvious data that is public in Meetup profiles: zip code. The city is listed, but hovering over the link that has the city as link text shows the zip code that member registered with, possibly long ago. This can be handy for deciding meeting locations, etc.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#114This 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…
What is the platform where these events have moved? Please tell me it's not just Facebook.
Website + mailing list, in one recent case.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#115[deleted]
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#116Yep. 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 o…
I don't see why people even bother--take over a group and post garbage events and people are just going to leave.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#117Meetup was a great platform but has totally lost it in the user experience. Out of all popular consumer apps, I would argue Meetup has the highest friction for both organizers and participants My problems meeting cyclists in Toronto led me to make a Toronto cycling discord of almost 1000 users I actually took the solution and have just launched an app for many more hobbies and anyplace! https://radar.ac We'lr be addi…
Meetup can't even get basic things correct. I updated my profile photo, and now the new one is shown on some pages while the old one is shown in others. I look totally different in the photos too, and since I'm the organizer it confuses the hell out of people!
It's been downhill ever since they switched to GraphQL; seems like their developers can't deliver on the basics.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#118Not 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,…
Fun fact: deletion of your messages is not possible. Meetup can only manually delete all user data, and doesn't have a possibility to delete data by purpose.
I filed a complaint to the Datenschutzbehoerde here, but the legal process takes a while.
If you want to do something against this, find out who is the representative for your state or country, and tell them about it. Usually they have a website for this, and need some screenshots or documents as evidence to start the legal process.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#119Earlier 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 actually didn’t create the original meetup group, my colleague did. I agreed to join his group that he runs. If someone else takes the reins that we don’t know I would like the option to drop out before they access anything.
Re: Tell HN: Meetup.com is offering abandoned meetups to anyone willing to pay
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tbh that practice seems to be on par with any social network standard out there. You get stuff, even for free, but the real product is still your data. If you don't want anyone to access that, you can't use these things.
Meetup is not free. Meetup is expensive as hell.
Members of groups don't pay. And it's their data that is valuable, since it comes in bulks. Noone would care if it was just the data of the paying group organisers.